Alexis raises her eyebrows at me. “My heart is real, thank you very much. It just was never Jordan’s.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “That’s not what I mean.”
Alexis rolls her eyes. “Relax, I know.”
I desperately want to ask Alexis if she’s heard from Jordan and how he is, where he is, but I’m not sure I’m prepared to know. I left an apology on his voice mail, but I haven’t heard back from him. Maybe he was right—maybe we shouldn’t speak anymore.
“Georgina has offered Malibu to us while she’s in Atlanta. She won’t be back until next month.”
“Have you seen the army at my gate?” I ask her. “How do you propose we get to Malibu?”
“Oh please,” she says, eyeing me up and down. “You think this is my first human heist?”
An hour later I’m in the back of Alexis’s Porsche Cayenne, covered in a quilt. We’ve packed up essentials—clothes, toiletries, laptop, cell phone—and made it out of the gate. I hear the shouts and screams. Luckily, I can’t make out most of the specifics.
We pull out of Bel Air, and I sit up as we turn onto Sunset and make our way across to Santa Monica and then the Pacific Coast Highway. I watch the ocean as we pass. I wonder what would happen if I just forced my way out of the car right now and ran straight in. Would someone catch me?
“A few things,” Alexis says, glancing in the rearview at me. “First things first: I’m going to get you through this, but you need to call Sandy back, and you need to set up a meeting with your agent.” Alexis shakes her head at me. “No excuses. This will blow over, but it’s big, and you need to talk to them about how you’re going to rehab your image. You need to be smart, Paige.”
I cross my arms. “Fine,” I say.
“And drop the attitude, darling,” she says. “No one likes a grump. Especially when she’s trying to recover from a very public scandal.”
“Anything else?”
Alexis’s eyes flash in the mirror as she makes a left into the Colony. “No lying out without me,” she says. “If we get tan, we get tan together.”
She parks, and I grab my duffel out of the back. I follow her up the stone steps, but the front door is already open. For a moment I have a flash of panic—the paparazzi have made it inside the Colony. They’re here. They found us already. But then I see him standing in the doorway. I am flooded with relief and then immediately dread—he doesn’t look happy.
“Oh yeah, one last thing,” Alexis says, passing him and disappearing into the house. “Listen to him.”
I look at Wyatt, his arms crossed and his black jeans and Ramones T-shirt combo offsetting his wild, curly head of hair. He’s wearing a look I’ve seen a lot before.
“I go away for one fucking month, and this is what happens?”
I hike my bag up farther, but I don’t take a step toward him.
“Well, come on,” he says when I don’t move. “I can’t yell at you until I’ve hugged you.”
And then Wyatt Lippman, our infamously temperamental director, is making his way toward me. He takes off my bag and puts it on the ground. It feels like he takes a lot more than my duffel. And then he puts his hands on my shoulders. I lean into him, stiff, but then he pats my back and I put my head on his shoulder. The tears come fast and furious. Everything from yesterday and the day before. The breakup, the tabloid headlines, those pictures—capturing the most confusing, personal moment and making it so harshly public—all come out in Wyatt’s comforting embrace.
“Now you give me emotion,” he says, chuckling.
Wyatt doesn’t let me off easy, but I don’t expect him to. He was the one who first warned me about dating Rainer. He didn’t like it.
“I expected more,” he says.
“I know.”
“You’re not like those other girls. Running around drunk with no pants on. Come on, PG, don’t let me be wrong about you.”
“I’m not. It was one stupid moment. Rainer and I got in a fight and he—”
Wyatt sits on a stool at Georgina’s counter, a glass of water in front of him. Like in Hawaii, he looks unbelievably uncomfortable at the beach. It fills me with something close to comfort. “Jordan,” he says.
I see Alexis through the sliding glass doors. She’s outside, giving us space, but I know she’s eavesdropping. I wonder if she can hear anything with the ocean behind her.
I put my elbows on the counter and thread my hands around my water glass. “Have you spoken to him?” I ask.
Wyatt shakes his head. “PG, listen to me. It doesn’t matter. You gotta let this go. This is not a love triangle, okay? This is not fiction; this is real life. You have to put this personal bullshit—all of it—behind you. You have a job, a real one. You need to go back to Maui ready to work.”
“I can’t even think about that.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to,” Wyatt says. “You know I don’t like to get personal,” he says, but his eyes have softened. “But I am telling you to stop with the both of them. Date someone from home. Date someone you met at the dog park—”
“I don’t have a dog.”
Wyatt waves his hand in the air, like whatever.
“So get one. Just stop keeping company with your costars,” he finishes. “What you need to worry about now is gaining back your fans’ trust.”
I shake my head. “How?” I say.
Wyatt laughs. He clocks my shoulder. “PG,” he says. “You’re a pretty girl and a great actress, but sometimes you can be really thick.”
“A great actress? Now I know you’re lying.”
“Nah,” he says. “That one is all truth.” Wyatt looks at me. His curly hair seems to have grown six inches outward in this salt air while we’ve been talking.
“I don’t want to do this without you,” I say. “Are you really not coming back?”
Wyatt chucks me under the chin softly. “I’m here now,” he says. “Let’s talk about what you need to do.”
Wyatt lays out rules. No partying, no shopping, no staged paparazzi pics with “the crew.” No dating movie stars. No drinking. Get a non-Locked job. When he leaves, I pull open my laptop. Alexis is outside, talking on the phone. I see her hands gesturing wildly.
Hour by hour, the story continues to spread. It’s posted in even more places than it was this morning. It feels like the entire Internet is devoted to hating me. There are real-world problems, there is news, but none of that is front and center. It’s just me, my body pressed against the side door of a hotel, and Jordan leaning over me.
FANS RAGE AT RAIGE
They don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re wrong. I want to throw my computer across the room. I want to make my own YouTube video, give an interview, anything to have a voice in this deafening chorus of cries. The whole world is a bully, and I can’t defend myself. I can just go into the bathroom, balance my lunch tray on my lap, and cry.
This is what I’ve been afraid of, and it’s just as bad as I thought it would be.
And then I see a headline. EXCLUSIVE: CLOSE SOURCE SPEAKS OUT ABOUT PAIGE AND JORDAN’S AFFAIR
My blood turns to ice in my veins.
I click on the link with shaky fingers.
A source close to Paige Townsen, a young woman who asked to remain anonymous, spoke exclusively to Fansugar regarding the Paige/Jordan affair. “I know Paige had feelings for Jordan for a long time. Since he first got to set. They hooked up once or twice when Rainer was away. She’s pretty fickle. She used to date a guy in Portland who was a friend, but she ditched him for Rainer the second she got to Maui.”
I feel my heartbeat slow to a stop in my chest. No one knew about Jake. No one but my family, and Cassandra.
“It won’t last with Jordan, and it won’t last with Rainer. Paige would never admit this, but she’s not reliable in love. She’s in over her head.”
I think about the two times Cassandra has been out here. At the premiere, I told her everything about Jordan. How I’d fallen for him on Maui
and how confused I was. But there’s no way she’d do this. I know Alexis and Georgina warned me about old friends, but they don’t know Cassandra like I do. Cassandra is Cassandra.
But how did they find out? Who sold me out? Is it possible I told Alexis or Georgina that Jake and I used to date? Would they do this?
I think about Alexis, how kind she has been. And Georgina offering us her home to hide out. I have no idea.
The only conclusion I can come to is that you can’t trust anyone, not a single soul.
I close the laptop. I feel light-headed and nauseous. I blink a few times and see Alexis at the door, a pitcher of lemonade in her hands.
She comes toward me, a concerned look on her face. “Everything okay?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
The breakup with Rainer is brutal. It feels like shards of glass swimming around in my chest cavity. But now I don’t even know who I can talk to. I have no idea who I can trust. And that, that isolation, that’s like a puncture straight to the heart.
Alexis pulls a glass down and hands me a cup. Then she puts her arm around me. She’s so much taller that I just lean into her side. “You have to tune it out and turn it off,” she says. “It’s the only way you’ll survive.”
“I guess so,” I say. Add it to the list of things I didn’t know about this life. I didn’t know getting to do what I love would mean giving up the freedom to be who I am. I didn’t know that the world would decide that for me. I didn’t know I’d have to hold things so close to my chest they wouldn’t even have the space to breathe.
CHAPTER 10
“It’s The Little Mermaid but for teens. You would play the girl who is torn between her merman love and a human.”
I look at Sandy. We’ve been in the office of my agent, Amanda, for forty-five minutes, and all I’ve heard are ideas for other YA franchises. Angels incarnated as mean girls, a princess who turns out to be an alien and takes over the nation. When Wyatt told me to get a job, I don’t think this is what he meant. I half expect them to start pitching me a love triangle about gnomes in outer space.
Finally I ask it: “What are we really doing here?”
Sandy dragged me out of bed this morning. For the past week I haven’t left Georgina’s. Alexis put a ban on the computer, and she has given me limited control over my cell phone, too.
Everyone keeps telling me it’s going to blow over, but no one will say when. Every day there are new stories. Rainer is back together with Britney. Jordan and Alexis broke up. We went to Maui to sort everything out. We’ve all quit the franchise. The whole thing is a publicity stunt.
Publicity stunt. Right. Because this press is so glowing and radiant.
I’ve had a headache for days. Something is chewing away at the vertebrae of my neck. Maybe I have meningitis.
Sandy agreed with Alexis—it’s better for me to lie low. Rainer is following suit, too. He hasn’t made any statements, and neither have I. “Silence is golden,” Sandy keeps saying. “Any energy is going to make it bigger.”
She has remained firmly on my side, and Rainer’s. I don’t pretend it is any small feat.
“Just make me one promise,” she told me. “Do not, under any circumstances, see Jordan Wilder.”
I’ve kept it.
Sandy gives Amanda a raised eyebrow. Amanda leans forward. She’s in her late thirties, with jet-black hair that is always pulled back in an expertly styled bun. She wears glasses and dress suits and generally has a scarf tied around her neck. She’s the best in the business, and she terrifies me.
“I know you’re aware this scandal”—Sandy clears her throat, but Amanda continues—“hasn’t been good for your image.”
“No way,” I deadpan.
“We’re holding tight to your Lancôme deal, but it hasn’t been easy.”
“Are they pulling their offer?”
Amanda threads her hands together. “They want to. But we won’t let them. The point is that right now your image is in the toilet.”
“What she means to say is—” Sandy interjects.
“What she means to say is exactly that,” I finish for her.
Amanda nods. “Sorry, but it’s true. We’ll be able to rehab, but the stuff you want isn’t available right now. What is available are these franchises. You’re still killing it at the box office.”
Locked is having a second life. Box office numbers haven’t been this good since opening weekend. Everyone wants to see the love triangle come to life on the big screen.
“Have you heard any more about Closer to Heaven?” I ask.
Sandy and Amanda exchange a glance. “I think we want to move in a different direction,” Amanda says, speaking slowly. “Closer to Heaven might not be the right role to launch you post-Locked.”
“They don’t even want to consider me anymore,” I whisper. What little opportunity I had for that part went away the second I put my hands on Jordan.
Sandy puts her hand on my knee. “It’s not that,” she says. “It’s just that they were already concerned about you being thought of as the Locked girl. You’re at maximum exposure now.”
“But you won’t always be,” Amanda offers. “Not in this way. Not if we make the right moves now.”
Amanda types something into her computer, then stops and looks at us. “Now more than ever I want us all to be on the same page about the career.” The Career. She uses the term the career constantly. Never your, always the.
“I’m not sure we are,” I say.
Both Sandy and Amanda stare at me.
“I love Locked, and that’s just the point—I want to do projects that inspire me. Closer to Heaven does. This mermaid thing doesn’t.”
Amanda opens her mouth to counter, but I keep talking. “Neither does Sunset Rivals or that one you pitched me about Salem witches reincarnated. I don’t want to do any of that. Nothing with a green screen. I want to do a real, human story. I want to act.”
“Sweetheart,” Amanda says, her tone clipped. “You’ll be acting in all of these.”
Sandy holds her hand up. “We’re going in circles,” she says. “We said we weren’t going to leave this office until we came up with next steps.”
Amanda switches tactics. “Listen, I get it, believe me. When Jennifer finished Trident, the only thing she wanted to do was some small-budget indie. There are incredible scripts out there, but you know where the really amazing scripts end up? Studios. You want the version of Closer to Heaven that has some traction behind it. You think all you need is a great script and a director with some vision, but really what you need is belief and support and money.”
Sandy nods. “She’s right; I hate to say it. A lot of these movies turn out terrible—or worse, they don’t even get released.”
“Exactly,” Amanda says. “And we can’t have your first role post-scandal be something two thousand people in an art theater see.” She stands up and comes around to the front of her desk. “We’re on the same side. We want you to do projects you love. That’s the point of this whole thing. But we also want you to have a long career. Let’s not forget that Locked is one movie.”
Sandy puts her hand on my shoulder. “It has been a rough week, right?”
“I’m not trying to get a sympathy vote,” I say. “I’m not…”
“We’re not dwelling,” Amanda says, holding up her hand. “We will get through this. We just want to know our options right now. And our options are the things I’ve pitched you. You’re in a rocky moment, okay, but that doesn’t mean you’re not still the hottest young actress in Hollywood. Remember, what you do now matters. For better or worse, everyone is watching.”
Everyone is watching.
I think about the photographers that are parked outside the Colony daily. I heard a neighbor talking about the disturbance next door. I feel bad. Terrible, actually. No one else asked for this. It’s bad enough that I can’t even go to Starbucks or to the grocery store or on a run, but now strangers are being hara
ssed in and out of their homes. All because of me.
“I’ve had my life taken away,” I say. “That’s the thing I don’t think you realize. The work is the only thing that’s good about this. I can’t—” My voice breaks, but I push through. I’ve cried too much over this already. “I can’t give that up, too.”
“Understood.” Sandy cocks her head in Amanda’s direction. We’re done.
“We’ll get the Closer to Heaven meeting,” Amanda says. “Even if I have to trade favors. But I’m going to keep sending scripts, and you’re going to keep reading them. I want you in the press for what you’re doing, not who—”
“I get it,” I say. I don’t need that sentence finished.
Amanda holds the door to her office open for us. The first thing I want to do is call Rainer, tell him about this meeting, and ask his advice. It’s so strange that he’s not here, that I can’t go to him for help. Maybe it’s because of this that I stop Sandy as we get in the elevator. “How is he?”
She makes a fuss of perching her sunglasses on top of her head. “Okay,” she says. “The family stuff is dying down, a bit.”
It’s true. Every tabloid has replaced Greg’s affair with mine.
I want to ask her the next question, but I don’t. I don’t get to know.
Sandy puts a hand on my shoulder. “Yes,” she says. “He misses you. He won’t admit it to me, but I can tell. I’ve known the kid forever.”
I choke back words. I miss him, too. Palpably. Sometimes I lie awake and hear the ocean, and I think we’re back on Maui. That it’s me and Rainer on that movie set, falling for each other all over again.
I think about a headline I saw on a discarded magazine in Amanda’s office. LOCKED OUT OF LOVE. No kidding.
“Where are you off to?” she asks.
Oh, you know. Lunch at the Chateau, drinks on Melrose, a walk in Santa Monica. “Malibu,” I say. Like I have a choice.
Sandy nods. “Listen, we have to talk about Tokyo.”
I pause. The elevator doors close on us. “What?”
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