“Don’t mention it. Don’t talk about our deal.”
“Why not?” I don’t understand. I’m uneasy, nervous.
“Because I’m sorry we made it. Too many lies to keep track of.”
“You mean the lies about us being together?”
“I mean the lies about how we’re not.”
I look down at him. He can’t mean what he seems to. His hand is at my breast. He’s stroking it idly, almost as if he doesn’t realize what it does to me. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t really know who I am anymore, Jenna. I thought I did, but tonight I found I was wrong. The old me would have been different. He would have lapped it all up. But I didn’t want to. It just made me angry. All I could think about, the entire time, was coming here.”
To my house? It’s so ridiculous.
“You’re Ashton Moran.” It’s such an empty thing to say, but some of the disorientation and confusion leave his expression. I don’t know if it’s what he honestly needs to hear, or if it’s more that he needs me, of all people, to say it.
“Am I? We’ve lied so much, I’m not sure. There’s the old story of Ashton Moran, and now there’s this new one. I’ve been in the new story for months now, but tonight I re-entered the old one. I didn’t feel comfortable in it, like I don’t know or like the old Ashton anymore. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because if I don’t like the old Ashton, it means I like being the new one instead. But the new one is a lie. The new Ashton doesn’t exist.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s all bullshit. Everything we’ve said in those interviews … bullshit.”
I look down. I don’t know what to say.
“Tell me it wasn’t all bullshit, Jenna.”
“I … I don’t know.”
“All I know is that tonight, I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t like me or who I’d become. I only like myself these days when I’m here, in the belly of the lie.”
He raises my shirt and bares my breasts. He kisses them sweetly, one by one. His hand his on my leg, moving slowly, warming me.
Then his hand goes to the center of my chest. To my heart. It’s ironic — he made his billions manufacturing clothing that monitors vital signs, relaying them to an app. But right now the great clothing titan is feeling my vitals using only the biometric device of flesh and bone offered by God. A connection born not of Bluetooth, but skin to skin.
He comes to my lips and kisses them.
“Don’t deny me now.”
His hand slips down my belly beneath my shorts. He cups my warmth. His finger slides between my lips, finding my wetness.
I moan against him.
Ashton kisses my neck.
“Don’t lie anymore, Jenna. Just tell me the truth.”
“I want you,” I say, my eyes closing.
A finger slips inside me. A startle, just a touch. I exhale slowly as he moves it in and out.
But I don’t want to take it slow. Since the moment I awoke to find Ashton above me, I’ve wanted him. Since the moment he climbed into bed and I felt his hard cock against my leg, I’ve flat-out needed him.
I reach down and undo his pants. I wrap my fingers around his cock and stroke it, feeling its heat, the slip of his skin as it moves across the hardness beneath. Then I’m pushing his pants down, raising my hips to let him take my shorts and panties away. He rolls onto me and pushes his thick head against my wet opening. Our bodies sigh in tandem and he effortlessly enters me.
It’s not like before. This is slower, sweeter. He fills me up and makes me whole. He kisses my neck and I kiss his. I raise my knees to let him go deeper. His strokes are long and slow, then faster. He’s careful not to shake the bed and wake the house. Then I come, and he comes with me. It’s without fanfare or ceremony. It just is. And then we’re two people in bed, holding each other.
And we sleep that way until morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ASHTON
“ASHTON, CHECK TMZ. NOW.”
ALYSSA’S voice ruins what has otherwise been a relatively peaceful morning. I haven’t worked on design in a while — since the first prototypes of the B-Tee were finalized. After that first shirt got its VC funding, I hired a team smarter than I am, stepping away from product design and started handling strategy and marketing, dollars and cents. But I had this idea a week or so ago and have been playing with it since — and for this idea it only felt right that I put my hands back into sensors and cloth. All morning it’s been me and a drafting table. Me and a pencil. But now there’s this bullshit.
Alyssa, barking at me.
Fucking Teddy puts her right through without warning, and all of a sudden her voice fills my office. There wasn’t even a ring, followed by my decision whether to accept the call or mentally prepare. This must be what it feels like when someone is meditating and gets an urgent text. I’ll need to fire Teddy soon.
“Not right now, Alyssa.”
“Did you hear me? Stop jerking off and check TMZ.”
“What’s TMZ?”
“Goddammit, Ashton.”
Alyssa’s intense frustration jars me. I do know what TMZ is; I just had to kick my brain out of productive serenity and into meaningless distraction in order to remember. It’s some gossip site. The kind of outlet we’ve been working so hard to win over, so that the more respectable, family-friendly outlets would take Jenna’s and my relationship story seriously.
“Okay, I remember. But I’m kind of in the middle of something. Teddy just piped you in without so much as a warning and—”
“I swear to God, if you don’t turn on your computer in the next ten seconds, I’m going to drive down there and kick you so hard in your vagina that your ovaries will spin.”
I have no response to this, so I reluctantly drop my pencil, knowing the new design won’t see more attention until inspiration strikes again, and turn on my monitor. I slowly open my web browser to punish Alyssa for being so demanding. Then I visit the website, rolling my eyes, feeling my brain liquifying between my ears.
“Are you there?” Alyssa asks me on speakerphone.
“What is this?”
“You’re there. You tell me.”
I can’t believe it. I’m looking at hastily censored photos of last night’s revelry at Spooner’s place. Either the most explicit action wasn’t captured or someone’s been delicate in their photo choices — I don’t see any dick-in-pussy shots even with black bars over them, but I do see lots of bodies in positions and states of undress. There are clearly a few blowjobs going down in the background. One shot shows someone — maybe that guy from Forage? I can’t tell — bending some naked girl over a hedge.
And that’s all obnoxious, but that’s not the coup de grace. Front and center, amid all the totally nude debauchery, is a shot of yours truly with some naked hot tub girl grabbing his junk.
Crosby. That fucking little shit with his camera phone.
I didn’t even see him take the shot that assails me from TMZ’s homepage, but he was clearly shutterbugging away. That girl surfaced from the hot water, grabbed my dick, and then I kicked her away. But somehow fucking Crosby managed to snap the literal two seconds between her reach and my kick. My face, in the photo, looks more intent than surprised. And damned if it doesn’t seem like she’s seconds from popping me out for a handie.
The headline reads, Celebrities Rock Out at Microdyne HQ.
And above my photo is a smaller headline, still dominant. It’s short and to the point — a not-terribly-clever twist on the spelling of my name.
It says simply: Ashton Moron.
And then the text below the photo goes for the throat, detailing how I’m supposedly a changed man in a committed relationship … and yet some Russian whore’s eager hand effortlessly turned me into a (wait for it) total moron.
“Care to explain yourself?”
The way she says it, Alyssa is clearly taking this personally. The public eye is her canvas, and
we’ve been her masterpiece all summer. Now I’ve gone and ruined the portrait she’s lovingly crafted of us as a doting, devoted couple. I’ve lost control, and shit all over it.
“This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Really.”
And I get why she says it. That might as well be the cheating man’s motto.
“It’s not. Seriously. Alyssa, I’m telling the truth. I was talking to Anthony Ross, both of us sitting with our legs in that hot tub. Then Mark Parker and his asshole little brother came over and hijacked me.”
“Right. That sounds like you.”
“Goddammit, Alyssa! I’m not making this up! I wanted to leave hours earlier but knew you’d be a fucking bitch about it if I did.”
“Don’t you dare try to turn this around on me, Ashton. I’m not the one who’s on the front page with my dick in the wrong hand.”
“She came out of the hot tub! I didn’t even know she was there!”
“You’ll need to come up with a better story than that.” She sighs heavily, exasperated with my stupidity. “Jesus, Ashton. You couldn’t even keep it in your pants in public to double your goddamn company’s business? Or at least keep it in Jenna’s?”
Shit.
“Jenna,” I say.
“Are you listening to me, Ashton?”
“Did you call her? Did you call her yet, Alyssa?”
“Who?”
“Jenna!”
“No, of course not. You’re the problem. She’s playing by the rules.”
“You have to call her. Tell her what I told you.”
“She’ll never buy that. And look, it doesn’t matter. It’s the ladies’ rags you’d better start explaining yourself to.”
“She’s going to flip out. Motherfucker, Alyssa, she’s going to—”
“Will you focus? Jenna’s not part of this. Why the hell are you so worked up?”
“If she sees this—”
“Who the fuck cares, Ashton?” Alyssa rages into my speaker. “She knows what a philandering asshole you are. What, do you think this is going to shock her? This is exactly what everyone knew you’d eventually do. That’s the problem. It’s not that it’s a surprise, it’s that it’s not even close to one. A photo of you getting your dick sucked by some hooker at a party wouldn’t normally be news, but after all the publicity we’ve done to—”
“SHE WASN’T SUCKING MY DICK! SHE DIDN’T FUCKING TOUCH ME!”
I swipe the phone from my desk so hard, the cord snaps from its base and the entire works strikes the drywall with enough force to split its casing. Alyssa falls silent, presumably disconnected. But the power cord is still attached, and as I stare at the broken phone like a challenger, it emits a low, steady buzzing like a nest of somnolent wasps.
Teddy pokes his head into my office. He looks at the phone, apparently summoned by its destruction. Then he swallows, and I know there’s more.
“Mr. Moran? There’s a Mr. Green for you on line two. Jenna Green’s father?”
He looks at the phone again, still buzzing.
And then he says, “I’ll transfer it to your cell.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
JENNA
THERE’S A KNOCK ON MY door. I’m surrounded by pillows and spent Kleenex. I don’t want to open up, because I know I must look terrible. And that matters, but it’s not even the whole reason I don’t want visitors. The other part has to do with this Möbius of pride I feel before me. I don’t know exactly where my dignity starts and stops; I only know that everything’s twisted, and defies all rational definitions of time and space.
I feel betrayed.
But how can that be, when Ashton and I were never together?
Another knock.
“Please, Dad. I just want some time.”
He hesitates. Then, “I called him, Jenna.”
Dad must take my silence as an invitation, because the door opens.
“Who?”
“Ashton.”
I blink. I don’t understand that word, coming from his mouth, in this particular context. “What? Why?”
“Because I’m your father.”
“But Dad …”
“He told me everything, Pumpkin.”
“Everything?” Somehow, I doubt it. Not with NDAs in place. From what Alyssa suggested, the chain of events spooling out from our little dance of deception could, parlayed carefully over the course of the coming years, result in literal billions in revenue. Raymond Green is a random guy to Ashton. I’m sure he told precise lies that hinted at truth, same as he did to the media. And the way that Ashton, who never actually committed one way or the other, implied precise lies last night and early this morning, before shimmying down my tree like a prowler.
“I know this must hurt,” Dad tells me, sitting beside me to rub my back.
“I’m fine.”
“Honey. You’re clearly not fine.”
As if to prove it, I honk loudly into a tissue. This makes my eyes water more, as if my entire body is trying to embarrass me.
“What did Ashton tell you, exactly?”
“That it was a publicity stunt. That your relationship was all for show.”
I watch him, my mouth hanging open. I can’t really be hearing a billion-dollar confession. If the world heard my father now, the fallout would cost Ashton a hell of a lot more than one stupid little college girl.
Dad rubs my back. My shoulders. “He told me that you were never actually a couple. But—”
“That’s just it, Dad. That’s why I’m fine. Because we weren’t a couple.”
“Honey …”
“So why does this bother me?” I laugh to prove the absurdity. “It’s like he cheated on me. But how can he cheat if he was never with me?”
“Jenna. Sweetie. It’s clear he was with you.”
“But not exclusively!” I want to go on, but my arguments all involve protestations about how relationships are for suckers, about how no-strings-attached sex is the best kind, and about how both of us always said, from the start, that we were in this to have fun. I made money, he stood to make money, we both got laid exuberantly and often.
But although those arguments might help convince Alex, they’re not exactly the kinds of things I’m dying to tell my father.
“I’m sorry.” He tries to hug me.
I half let him. “Don’t feel sorry. It was just a job. Did he tell you how much they paid me?”
He nods. He should look recriminating, because he raised me better than to sell myself for cash. Instead he looks pitying and sad.
“Then you know. I went to interviews with him. We appeared in public together. Obviously I was lying about the zoo job. I’m sorry, Daddy. I was just trying to get by. It was too good a deal to pass up.”
He says nothing.
“It was just a job,” I repeat. “So it doesn’t matter.”
I start to cry again. I don’t know where it comes from, but once it starts, I can’t stop shaking.
My father rubs my back as I sob.
I can lie all I want, but Dad knows heartbreak when he sees it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
JENNA
ASHTON CALLS ME A FEW times throughout the day. I get tired of declining his calls, so I turn off my phone. It stays that way until mid afternoon, when Dad knocks on my door.
I look up, then scan my room for evidence.
By now I’m mostly composed. I picked up all the discarded tissues and washed my face. I’m not going to think about it. I was hired for a job, and might even still have it. Our contract was for six months and we’ve served almost three. I might be expected to keep appearing publicly, playing the game until its finished.
To keep from being upset, I wonder which direction Alyssa will spin this scandal. Will we deny that Ashton did anything wrong — and if we do, will I come off looking like one of those naive wives of cheating men, who stand idiotically beside their philandering husbands, buying their lies hook, line, and sinker? Or will Alyssa
send us down a different path — one where Ashton admits his wrongdoing, and then must work to earn my affections?
I stop being sad and angry once I start to realize that this could actually benefit Ashton rather than hurt him. Doesn’t every good love story have its ups and downs? Family Circle might have rolled their eyes at me and Ashton becoming a couple … but they might looooove the tale’s little twist, now that he has to man up and win me back.
That makes me wonder if maybe the whole thing was planned.
What if Alyssa and Ashton always meant for him to cheat at the midpoint of our made-up fairy tale, and didn’t tell me because they wanted a genuine reaction.
I don’t want to believe it. I can still feel Ashton’s soft, somehow different touch from last night. I can still hear the strange words he whispered in my ear.
Tell me it wasn’t all bullshit, Jenna.
There’s another knock, then the door opens a crack and I see half of my father’s head poke its way inside. “Jenna?”
I look up. “Hey.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine, Dad. Totally fine.”
“You had a visitor.”
“Who?” It has to be Alex. She was going to come help me pack my stuff for the move back to school, but now I imagine her fast-forwarding her trip so she can be here to console me. Alex warned me after all. Despite the nice things she said about Ashton, she also insisted that the man was a philanderer by nature. He can be sweet, but he’ll never be monogamous.
That’s fine, I told her, because we’re just having sex and having fun.
I’m not sure how I’ll face Alex now. She saw this coming, and still I stepped right into it.
I guess I’ll lie. I’m good at that these days. I’ll tell Alex that he didn’t hurt me.
What does it matter if he came to my bed last night? What does it mean if we shared intimate moments away from the cameras, in the moonlight, as our hearts beat in tandem?
No, Alex. You’ve got it all wrong. Ashton Moran is only a paycheck.
“It was Ashton,” Dad says.
I blink as I look up. My eyes were finally dry. They still are, but now they don’t know how to feel, how to appear, what to see.
Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Clothing Mogul Page 14