“He asked me to give you this.” Dad’s hand enters the room with a manilla envelope, its flap sealed.
“What is it?”
“It’s an envelope.”
I’m not sure if Dad is trying to be a wiseass to lighten the mood, but I take his offer without a word. He backs out, leaving my door ajar.
My nondisclosure agreement is inside. The original, signed with my shaking hands. Behind it is the contract Ashton and I signed, bearing both of our signatures.
The agreements are in pieces. Torn up. Scraps of meaninglessness nothing, falling from the envelope now like closely-printed snowflakes.
Dad says, “Those are the only copies.”
But when I look up, the speaker isn’t my father. It’s Ashton, who must’ve been behind him in the hallway.
“Do you understand, Jenna? There are no duplicates of the contract or the NDA. Alyssa wanted to scan them at least, but I insisted that we didn’t. Both were pointless documents. Entirely unenforceable. You could always have done whatever you wanted, ignoring whatever you’d signed. Because what were we supposed to do? Chase after you and pull you into court, announcing to the world, ‘No, your honor! She promised to pretend to be my girlfriend, so make her keep pretending!’ while court reporters recorded it all for the public? Copies were a liability. So we only have the original of each.” He looks down at the shreds on my floor. “Well. Had them, anyway.”
I swallow. I look at the ripped-up papers, then away. My eyes have moistened. I don’t know if I’m sad or overwhelmed or furious.
“What the hell are you doing here, Ashton?”
“I needed to see you. I had to explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain.” I swallow past a lump in my throat, then reach down to grab a handful of discarded contract and NDA. Both crumple in my fist. I hold them up. “This was my contract, too. It wasn’t just yours.”
“Jenna …”
“I promise to pretend to be in a relationship,” I say, pretending to quote from the contract. “I promise to pretend to love Ashton Moran, for the benefit of the public.”
“You have to understand. I—”
“I promise to pretend to believe that Ashton loves me, too. I’ll fake-believe everything he fake-tells me. I’ll buy his fake sincerity. And I’ll keep in mind, the entire time, that no matter how things might seem to change, it’s all smoke and mirrors. That it’s all — always — a lie.”
“It wasn’t a lie.”
“Of course it was.”
“You’re upset.”
“I’m not upset at all.” I don’t wipe my eyes; I don’t sniff; I don’t let my face belie the tumult inside. I give him my most serious face. I want Ashton to see the way I say these words, and believe I mean every one.
Ashton looks at me as if trying to square what he sees with what my father must have told him. I don’t like that he has that conflicting set of inputs. Why did Dad call him? And why did Ashton tell him the truth instead of the lie?
Ashton humbles himself before no one — not before Cole Ellison and certainly not Raymond Green. Yet here he is in my room, having entered through the front door with Dad’s apparent blessing. What have they discussed? And how much does my father believe?
I look up at Ashton, wanting to say something cutting. Instead, I ask myself what someone who saw this as the transaction it was supposed to be would say. “Well, thanks for coming out.”
“I didn’t do anything. The girl in the picture, at the party? She was—”
“Fondling you. I know.”
“No. She was—”
“Topless?”
“Jenna …”
I fake a little laugh. “Sorry. I meant, ‘bottomless.’”
“She surprised me, but what’s in the picture was all there was. She touched me without asking and I pushed her away.”
“It’s tough being you, Ashton. Beating girls off with a stick.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Of course you are.”
“Spooner’s party wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.” He shakes his head and glances at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. I mean, it was exactly what I thought it was going to be. But I didn’t want any part of it. Like I told you last night—”
“Last night was a mistake.”
He looks at me as if I’ve stabbed him in the side. It disarms me, so I force my interior walls to lower, make my voice more reasonable, and sigh to reset so I can try again.
“I’m not mad at you,” I say.
“Your father says different.”
“I’m not mad and I’m not hurt. It caught me off guard, was all.” I realize that I mean the words as they leave my mouth. “You didn’t make a mistake at that party. We both made a mistake, before and after it. Of course I’m not mad at you. How can I be? What, did you cheat on me? We’re not even together.”
“But Jenna—”
“We both signed that contract. We knew this was business. Maybe we shouldn’t have started up with … with what we ended up doing outside the contract. But we did. And we said it would only be about sex. And we had some great sex. Toe-curling sex. But last night …” I trail off, not unsure how to articulate the change, just unwilling to do so. “It was a mistake.”
“That girl didn’t touch me. The party turned into an orgy, so I left. It turned into something I didn’t want to be a part of, so I walked away and came to you.”
“It doesn’t matter, Ashton.”
“It matters to me.”
“I’m glad. I’m glad you’re … I don’t know — finding yourself, maybe. But it doesn’t involve me. It shouldn’t. I have nothing to do with it.”
“You have everything to do with it.”
I can’t look at him. I don’t want to admit that his words ring true. It’s not that I don’t believe him; that’s the crazy part. It’s not that he hurt me.
It’s that I now know he can, and how badly it hurts.
“Our relationship …” His face shifts as if he doesn’t know the end of his sentence.
“Was a lie.”
“Changed,” he finishes, ignoring me.
“Relationships are for suckers. We both said that.”
“For most people, they are.”
It’s too much absurdity. This is Ashton Fucking Moran. The man whose cock is such a nomad, it never sleeps in the same cave twice. That’s who the world knows; it’s who he is; it’s the man he was when I felt something for him. If there’s a problem here, it’s in my head.
I love him as a liar. He terrifies me by being genuine.
The fibs don’t frighten me, and the truths cut me deep.
I pick up a fist of shredded contract and NDA, hold it between us like an accusation, then practically throw them in his face. “We aren’t a couple! Your fucking contract said so and we both knew it from the start! We’re not in a relationship, Ashton, so stop apologizing for breaking the rules! There are no rules! You can’t cheat on air! This is what we were.” I crinkle more of the papers, my nails cutting half-moons into my tightened fist. “Just a bunch of bullshit, dreamed up by your publicist. It didn’t mean anything!”
He shakes his head. “It meant something to me.”
I can’t believe him. I can’t believe he’s doing this to me … whatever it is.
I stand, open my door the rest of the way, and stare, willing him to rise. “Goodbye, Ashton. Have Alyssa call me and we’ll set up whatever she wants. Whatever comes next in your media circus.”
“Nothing comes next. There’s no contract anymore. Nothing binds us. There’s nothing to stop you from telling the press … well, from telling them whatever you want.”
I suppose this is meant as a gesture of contrition. Without the contract, he’s saying I’m free to choose whatever I want — and I guess I’m supposed to choose him, regardless of my compensation.
“Just ‘goodbye,’ then,” I say instead.
CHAPTER THIRTY
JENNA
<
br /> I’M UNPACKING ONE OF ALEX’S boxes when the buzzer purrs inside our new apartment. It’s the first time we’ve had a visitor, so I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. I’d call for Alex, but she’s in the bathtub, having declared herself too sore, from lugging boxes upstairs, to continue. Besides, I should be able to figure out how an intercom system works, right?
Apparently not. I press a few buttons on the little panel and say “Hello?” but nobody answers. I have no idea if it failed to go through, if it did go through but I couldn’t hear the responses, or neither of the above. I know it’s the pizza we ordered, but don’t know if I’ve buzzed the guy in or left him hanging.
I grab my key and walk downstairs. The guy is still there, fortunately. I can see him waiting patiently beyond the clouded glass in the reception area.
Rather than dicking with the buzzer again, I open the door. I’m handing the guy a twenty when I realize he’s in a courier’s uniform rather than a pizza man’s. And while I’m trying to hand him the twenty, he’s offering me some sort of digital clipboard.
“Jenna Green?”
I look at the large envelope under his arm. I guess I’ve got a delivery, but this isn’t US Mail or UPS or FedEx. I don’t recognize the service, but I take the clipboard and tell him that yes, he’s got the right girl.
He points. “Sign here.”
I sign.
Then the guy says, “You’ve been served,” and turns without another word.
I walk upstairs feeling lost. I can’t get my key to work, but Alex seems to be out of her bath. She opens the door and looks at my face. “What?”
“I’ve been served.”
“You’ve been what?”
I hold up the envelope. “Served.”
“Served what?” Then her face twists. “What, like someone’s suing you?”
I don’t know, so I open the envelope using the rip strip across one end. Inside is a thin stack of official-looking papers bound with a clip. There’s a tiny flapping protrusion coming from the side that turns out to be a “SIGN HERE” arrow affixed to the back page, indicating a long line where I guess I’m supposed to put my John Hancock.
“What is it, Jenna?”
My brows pull together. “It’s from Ashton’s office.”
“Ashton? I thought you said he’d stopped calling?”
“He did.” I’m flipping through the documents, already starting to percolate. It’s been two weeks since I last saw him, but he only stopped calling a few days ago. He won’t leave messages. He just calls and calls and calls. Him and Alyssa, forever in a loop.
“Well, what’s this?”
I’m scanning. “I don’t know.” Then: “Jesus. That fucker.”
“What?”
“Has Nathan said anything about Ashton lately? About Ashton and me?”
Alex shrugs. “Nathan has a lot of irons in the fire.”
“Nothing about me?”
“Nothing I saw. But it’s not like I watch every little thing he does.”
“But you’re together. You and Nathan.”
“But not attached at the hip. What, do people in relationships have to be together 24/7? I’m still in college. Am I supposed to drop everything and become a rich man’s housewife?”
“Are you two talking about marriage?”
“No! Not yet, anyway. Maybe eventually. Probably eventually. Okay, pretty for-sure eventually. But I’m only nineteen, dammit.”
I look my friend over, as if she’s hiding something I can’t see. Why have I been assuming that just because she and Nathan are together, that they’d melded into a singular being? It reminds me of something Dad said, when he was trying to get me to at least take Ashton’s calls: You don’t have to leap off a cliff and abandon everything you are to be with someone, Pumpkin. You just have to be willing to take a single step in faith, then another after that.
My father, the relationship sage. Because he — with his failed marriage — can teach me so much?
Fortunately, I see through the bullshit. It’s easier when the only person you need to trust and rely on is yourself, no steps of faith required.
“This is about you,” Alex says, “not me.”
I’m still looking at the papers. “What an unbelievable, cocky-ass motherfucking dickhead.”
“What did he do?”
I shake the papers at Alex. “Do you know what this is?”
“No, because you won’t tell me or show me.”
“It’s an NDA. A nondisclosure agreement. He and his lawyers apparently got tired of trying to get me on the phone to keep my mouth shut, so they sent me papers.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe it.”
Alex takes the papers from me and leafs through them. “This is about your media stuff this summer.”
“Exactly. It’s basically a cease-and-desist in advance. Alyssa must be afraid I’m going to blab, so she’s trying to gag me.”
“You don’t have to sign it, do you?”
I laugh. “That’s what makes it so funny. Of course I don’t have to. I signed one before, and Ashton tore it up when he was trying to convince me to keep up our ruse. But he tore up the contract too, and made this big show of It’s all over; there’s nothing binding us together now. I guess I was supposed to be impressed by the gesture and fall into his arms. But this proves it was only another ruse, and I called his bluff. You said he always lies, Alex. Here’s proof. Now he’s caught high and dry without a contract or an NDA, and he’s trying to backpedal.” My teeth clench. “Well, fuck that.”
Alex is looking over my shoulder. “I don’t get it.”
“What’s there to get?”
“He just seemed so … taken with you.”
“Men. They’re all the same. Lying, cheating bastards. And to think — my dad, being one himself, should know better than to wish one on me.”
“It’s not always like that, Jenna.”
But I’m pissed. I want to tear the NDA into confetti. Even more than that, I want to shove it right down Ashton’s arrogant throat. I’ve got him by the balls, and he must know it. I can blab all I want. I could write a tell-all book about our attempted scam. I could ruin him.
“You and Nathan are an exception.” And they are. They’re so sweet to each other I want to puke. “There’s almost never an upside. It’s true what Ashton and I used to say, back before he became a fucker again: relationships really are for suckers. We were better when there was only sex between us. That’s how things should be. You get your needs met, without the chance to get hurt.”
I know that’s a naive thing to say, but I don’t take it back.
“I’m sure he’s just covering his ass with that NDA. He probably doesn’t even know it was sent.” Alex nods, realizing a truth. “Alyssa. Alyssa Galloway probably had it sent to you without his knowledge.”
“He knew.”
“He wouldn’t do that to you, Jenna. He cared about you. Probably still does. Don’t go jumping to conclusions and doing stupid things when you don’t even know that—”
“He knew.” I’m holding the NDA up for Alex to see, pointing at the place where Ashton signed it, then dated it as of this morning.
Alex looks like she can’t believe it. As if the pretty princess carpet she’s been living on with the love of her life has just been ripped out from under her, forcing her to see that realistic stories — unlike bullshit fantasies — don’t usually have such happy endings.
“Then throw it away,” Alex says.
But I’m already halfway out the door, my car keys in one hand and the crumpled NDA in the other.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ASHTON
I’M FACING MY WALL OF windows when Teddy buzzes Jenna into my office.
I let her shout at me for a while. I don’t even turn. She can rail all she wants because I’m not interested. I gave her plenty of chances to close this affair in a rational, straightforward, businesslike manner.
But Jenna kept dodging my calls. She kept igno
ring me, going so far as to tell her father, her roommate, and even my colleague Nathan to never talk to me about her (or vice versa) again. I didn’t even do anything wrong, and she goddamn well knows it. We could have — should have — ended this thing on amiable terms.
But no. The fact that both of us got infected with inappropriate feelings turned Jenna into an unreasonable bitch. She’s no longer capable of listening to logic. She was right: I can’t cheat on someone I’m not in a relationship with … and even if I could, I didn’t.
For over three long months I haven’t had sex with another woman. I put my cock’s wandering nature into dry dock for this woman and this is how she thanks me? Fuck Jenna and her damage. She’s afraid of being hurt — that’s no reason to force me into taking such dramatic measures.
Jenna’s worked up a full head of steam by the time she reaches my still-turned back. I listen for a while longer, hearing all the ways I’m an arrogant, narcissistic asshole. I’m almost reveling in it. Because like it or not, she doesn’t need to sign that NDA. She doesn’t even need to agree with it. I’ve won by the only definition I care about simply by issuing it, and no amount of bitching from Jenna will change that.
“Are you even listening to me?” I can practically hear her stomp her tiny foot.
I turn. “I’m listening.”
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Is this a browbeating? Are you shaming me, telling me all the ways I’ve been a bad boy? Because that question — it’s one you’d ask a toddler. But I’ll answer, Jenna: I have nothing to say for myself because I’m a grown man. I’ve earned the right to not explain myself. Everything I have to say is right there.”
I point to the NDA, crumpled in her hands.
A glint enters her eye. “I don’t have to sign, you know. I can disclose all I want.”
I offer Jenna a serpent’s smile. I knew it’d be like this, and now I get to identify something that should have been obvious … if she ever paid any damn attention. “Go ahead. Disclose.”
“Is this some sort of reverse psychology? Do you think you’re going to trick me like you did when we met? Intimidate me into doing what you want without thinking? Not this time, Ashton. I’ll get a lawyer. I’ll fight you. I’m not an idiot. I know that if you want this contract binding against me, I have to acknowledge it by—”
Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Clothing Mogul Page 15