Sweet Cheeks

by K. Bromberg

  His voice escalates in pitch, in anger, in exasperation, with each and every word he speaks and all I can do is stand against the wall where I’ve moved into the hall and wait. I hope Hayes hasn’t missed something major to do with a movie or a premiere or whatever the hell actors worry about while being here.

  And yet at the same time, intuition tells me this conversation has something to do with me. I’m not sure how that’s even possible and yet I do.

  “Well it backfired. Big time . . . You did it without permission. You leaked the comment. Let people assume what they wanted and you never once thought about anyone but you. Fucking typical, now isn’t it? Must have not been getting enough attention and so you went and . . . NO!” His voice thunders into the house, echoing off the floors and down the hallway. “I loved you, Jenna. But this? This is why I’m over you. Why I’m done selling my soul to keep your secrets and fuck my life up in the process. Fuck the non-disclosure. Let them pull it. Let them sue me. See if I care . . .”

  Hayes keeps speaking but I don’t hear any of it because all I keep hearing is I love you, Jenna. Or was it loved? The phrase repeats over and over and over in my head. Those three words he didn’t say to me.

  I love you, Jenna.

  But he did to her.

  My feet move on their own. My heart so full it was ready to burst ten minutes ago now feeling like it will implode.

  Rage like I’ve never felt before pounds through my veins. Not since that night on the Schilling farm when I saw Danny Middleton forcing himself on Saylor have I been this livid.

  It all comes back to Saylor, doesn’t it?

  Jenna drones on in my ear yet I don’t hear her bullshit. Can’t listen to another one of her endless self-serving lies. It’s amazing how she used to mean something to me.

  And now she means nothing. Nothing except the reason Saylor may walk the other way.

  And to think I’m the dumb-shit who went along with this idea. Signed the damn NDA and got roped into her bullshit. But in the end, none of it fucking matters because she screwed me anyway.

  “I had to do it. There was press snooping around and so I threw them a few hints to throw them off.”

  A few hints? More like Here’s Saylor. She’s the homewrecker, served on a goddamn platter.

  “I loved you, Jenna. But this? This is why I’m over you. Why I’m done selling my soul to keep your secrets and fuck my life up in the process.”

  “You can’t mean that.” Panic fills her voice. “What about my dad? What about the film? You signed a—”

  “Fuck the non-disclosure. Let them pull it. Let them sue me. See if I care.” I pace the room, free hand pulling down on the back of my neck as my mind reels an endless loop.

  “NO! Please, I can’t fix it but I’ll make it up to you . . .”

  When I turn to pace back toward the kitchen, I come face to face with Saylor. Her hair is piled on top of her head, her pink lips are parted, and her cheeks flushed.

  But her eyes are swimming with an ocean of hurt.

  Oh, fuck. She knows.

  “Saylor.” I throw my phone onto the counter without a thought to Jenna still spewing her bullshit excuses.

  “I love you, Jenna?”

  Fuck me. Of all the things I said, it’s par for the course she heard that one the loudest. She’s most likely already made it to be something other than how I meant it. And before I can even answer her unspoken question, her shoulders have squared. She’s on the defensive.

  And that means her temper isn’t far behind.

  “It’s not what you think. Let me explain.” I’m not sure which one I should say first so I say both as fast as possible, knowing I need to stop this before it starts.

  “Not what I think?” She folds her arms across her chest. Shifts her feet. Clenches her jaw. “I’m trying to be calm here, Hayes, and not jump to conclusions but I’m having a hard time. Maybe you should explain why you’re so upset. Why you’re talking about image and doing something to someone which sure as hell sounds like you’re referring to me . . . and why you told Jenna you love her when I’m really hoping you actually said you loved her.”

  “Jenna’s a mess.” I start the only place I can because the space between Saylor and me feels like the fucking arctic chill is freezing me out, and so I don’t have time to waste. “She’s been in and out of drug treatment centers for the better part of the last year and a half.” Her eyes widen. Surprise fills them and thank fuck because it’s a whole helluva lot better to see the surprise than the hurt that was there a few seconds ago.

  “It’s Hollywood’s best-kept secret. Everyone knows but no one dares talk about Paul Dixon’s daughter and her little nose candy problem. Shit, I didn’t even know about it for the first six months of our relationship. We were working a ridiculous schedule on The Grifter, and I was either too tired or too preoccupied to notice the signs.”

  I think back to how it all started. The mornings she’d miss her call time. The endless excuses. The erratic mood swings.

  “I tried to be patient with her. Thought I could help her. I don’t know.” I sigh. Run a hand through my hair. I’m restless. “I was in way over my head, but I liked her. Liked having someone who understood the pressure of the job. It didn’t hurt we were on a remote location in Vancouver so we mostly had each other to pass the time.”

  “What does any of this have to do with right now? With what you said? I thought you guys broke up a few months ago.”

  I chuckle. It’s a self-deprecating sound that reflects how stupid I feel now over agreeing to it. “To the outsider, we did, but in all honesty we were done way before that.” Saylor shakes her head and tries to process shit I don’t even understand. “We completed the film, and when we came back to Los Angeles she was out of control. She went off on the director, fired her agent, and publicly bad-mouthed both. She barged in on a movie her dad was filming, accused him of all kinds of unspeakable shit and embarrassed the hell out of him. Then in a horribly bad move, she pissed off the studio with an interview she gave where she criticized the film and the decisions being made surrounding it. Suddenly the film the studio had slated as their blockbuster of the summer was surrounded by bad press. There’s no other word for the damage she’d done but fucking brutal. We had to stage an intervention that ended up with her checked into a rehab facility. Little did I know it had been her third or fourth time there in as many years.”

  “I remember the bad press about the film. But didn’t realize any of this—”

  “No one does. The studio was pissed. The backers and producers who gave huge sums of investment capital to the studios to fund their budget were pissed. Especially since this film’s budget was one of their largest in the studio’s history, they were willing to do whatever it took to make sure its success wasn’t risked before it even released. But her interview got a lot of press. She was a loose cannon and the studio wasn’t sure they wanted to risk losing the marketing budget for a movie when the lead actress seemed determined to undermine it. They talked about tabling it or sending straight to Netflix, but they knew they’d lose their ass. Some of the backers threatened to pull their money from the project if the studio didn’t get Jenna’s antics under control. And little did I know that some of the backers knew her history because they ran in the same circles as her dad. And that shared history led to them inserting an addendum in her contract that very few people knew about—me included.” I shake my head in frustration. Remember how fucking furious I was when the caveat was revealed to me the day she entered rehab. “It stated that if she didn’t stay sober, she agreed to forfeit her advance and all earnings from the film. And in turn, mine in a sense. To say I was a little blindsided is an understatement especially considering she hadn’t stayed sober. Shit, the studio went into panic mode trying to figure out how to hide Jenna’s breach of contract from the backers.”

  “Image is everything,” Saylor murmurs, her eyes wide and interest piqued, as she sits on the top step of the stairs. A
t least I still have her attention.

  “Yeah, well the money men thought so too. And the big thing was the studio wanted Jenna’s little trip to rehab kept under wraps. They knew if the backers found out she’d broken the terms of her contract, they’d pull the remainder of the funds, which in turn meant less marketing, less everything . . . including us getting paid until after it’s released and there’s ticket sale money being generated.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  My laugh is rich. I love her naïveté about the industry and wish I was just as oblivious most days. “I may be successful and a big-draw name, Say, but the money men . . . they have a lot more control in my world than people think. They give the money to the studios and since they’re the ones shouldering all the risk, the actors must deliver on all aspects: acting, promoting, public relations. They hold all the cards. So the day after Jenna goes into rehab, I’m called into a meeting where I’m told the details of her contract, and the repercussions for both her and me if the backers find out she’s using again. Talk about a cluster fuck. I freaked while my lawyers scrambled to find a loophole in my contract and demanded answers why I wasn’t told this prior to filming. At the same time, Jenna’s lawyers were in my face begging for me to stick it out to save the film. It was a nightmare I couldn’t get out of without seriously damaging important business relationships and throwing a lot of hard work down the drain. During the chaos, they asked me and anyone who knew anything to sign a non-disclosure agreement. They didn’t want word getting out and ruining the chances of the movie being released. They were banking on it to be the blockbuster that would boost their ever-waning profit margins in this constantly growing NetFlix, AppleTV, and online streaming world. They thought if we kept Jenna’s rehab stint under lock and key and her image squeaky clean, we could pull it off. They released old pictures of us to the press or planted stories in Page Six. All kinds of stupid shit to hide she was in rehab. Anything to keep the perception alive that we were costars in love, on and off screen. Then after the movie releases next month, we could call off our fake relationship.”

  “Wait a minute. Your studio asked you to pretend to be a couple for her image’s sake?” She sounds dumbfounded. Just like I am most days in this industry.

  “Yes. But she didn’t keep her nose clean. A few months ago she got into it again with her dad and he basically disowned her until she straightened her shit up. He knew the signs, knew she was using again, and wanted to show her some tough love, I guess. She came to my place crying hysterically and lost her mind when she saw Tessa was there.” I think of the scene. Jenna’s unpredictable actions and crazy temper. How she tried to hit Tessa and then me. Threw shit. Broke stuff. “That’s when I realized that Jenna had an unhealthy attachment to me and that I needed to start distancing myself from her. It was as if she believed all of the bullshit stories being fed to the public about how we were still together. It kind of freaked me out, Say. I suddenly realized we—meaning the studio and how I went along with it—were so very wrong in how we handled the situation. And I’m not sure if it was the pressure of her father’s ultimatums or realizing she and I were really all an act, but the night after I kicked her out, she attempted suicide.”

  “Hayes.” And just like that, the sound of compassion in her voice tells me she just might not unravel when I tell her how she plays into all of this. Then again . . .

  “Yeah. It was bad.” I think back to that phone call. To the frantic feeling over whether she was going to be okay. From disbelief to guilt wondering if it was my fault. “And of course I immediately felt responsible for being the tipping point because I kicked her out of the house. Those first few days were horrible and for the life of me, I have no idea how her attempt had been kept out of the press. I can’t imagine the number of greased palms and signed NDAs that her agent or manager or the damn studio for all I know, swooped in and used to keep everyone quiet. But they did. Until two days later when someone saw me heading into the hospital to check on her and started snooping around. I had no clue but somehow the studio found out. Their PR person, unbeknownst to me, decided to distract the snooper by diverting their attention to me.”

  “The cheating story.” The way she says it, like she never believed it in the first place despite asking me, makes me feel a bit of relief.

  Let’s hope that feeling lasts. Shit. Why the hell did I ever go along with this?

  “Yeah. The story about me cheating on her. When I woke up and saw the tabloids and found out what was going on, you can bet your ass I chewed out the studio. I threatened and raged but the story already had a mind of its own and there was no stopping it by then. What was I supposed to do? Cause a scene? Admit to the press and in turn the backers I was part of the studio’s lies about Jenna’s drug use and now suicide attempt? At that point I was just as complicit as she was.”

  “Which was just what the studio wanted.”

  “Bingo. I walked right into that one. But how were my agent and I to know Jenna was going to take a bottle of pills and try to off herself? I had a twenty-million-dollar contract riding on this and obviously an emotionally fragile ex-girlfriend. I was fucked in all the wrong kind of ways and it was no one’s fault but my own.” I look at Saylor and search for judgment in her eyes but find none. “So yeah, I let the PR company and the press paint her as the damsel in distress who had to take some time away from Hollywood after I cheated on and humiliated her. So I ignored the questions about what happened with us in interviews. Figured the less I said the better. It made me look like the asshole but it was better than telling more lies.”

  “And of course women can forgive assholes because they love the bad-boy vibe but they don’t forgive other women. They vilify them.”

  “I never looked at it that way, but yeah, pretty much.” I blow out a breath and hate she’s about to find out firsthand just how bad the vilification can be.

  “And so the I love you was more . . .”

  She leads me into the statement, needing to hear me say what her eyes tell me she already infers. But I understand. If the situation were reversed, I’d probably feel the same way. Huh. Who am I kidding? I’d be pissed and demanding answers. Not standing there with admirable patience, listening to me make excuses for the woman who she has no idea just fucked up her world.

  “She’s a fragile head case, and I don’t want to ruffle her feathers. That’s why I said I loved you. Because I gotta admit, the longer this charade goes on, the more skeptical I am of her motives. I thought it was legitimate at first, but now? Now the special treatment and shitload of attention she’s receiving makes me think she’s feeding off all of this. That she couldn’t handle fading from the spotlight so she pulled this stunt—the “attempted suicide”—to get more of it. Of course, I played right into her hands. Everyone’s looking at her now, coddling her, paying attention to her. And it’s becoming more and more evident that we’ve all been had.”

  “Why’d you agree to go along with it all?”

  “Because I’m stupid?” My laugh sounds empty as I scrub a hand over my face and just shake my head at how ridiculous the situation is and how fucking gorgeous Say is. “Because at that point I was so deep into it I became just as guilty for covering it up as she was. Maybe because I felt sorry for her and the pressure she must always be under to live up to Paul Dixon and his shelf-full-of-Oscar’s legacy. And maybe, selfishly, because it’s a damn good movie. It’s some of my best work to date and Jenna . . . off-screen she may be a mess, but on-screen? On-screen she’s a goddamn genius, and I think this movie has the blockbuster potential the studio thinks it has and then some. So yeah, of course the twenty-million-dollar paycheck I have riding on it is definitely motivation to just ride it out. Let it release into theaters and then walk away and wash my hands of her.”

  “But how do they know the image they painted of you isn’t going to hurt the release of the film?”

  “They don’t but the studio has already scheduled me into the ground for the next
month so that I’m visible and smiling and showing I’m still the nice guy everyone thought I was. The one who still politely declines to speak about my very public break-up and any inaccuracies reported about it for the sake of I’m a gentleman and that’s a private matter.”

  “The company line.”

  “Yes.”

  “Unbelievable. You have every right to be angry. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the studio has the power to make you . . . that she had the audacity . . . all of it.” She purses her lips and looks at me with eyes full of disbelief. Dread fills me as I wait for her to ask the question written all over her face. The one I wish I didn’t have to answer: “So what happened just now that made this escalate?”

  Of course I’m relieved about the I loved you, Jenna comment, but digesting everything he’s told me isn’t easy. How do people get away with all the lies and deceit? While I understand the studio’s need to make the film a success, using Hayes and his reputation to ensure that feels dirty. And of course, good-guy Hayes lets them use him to take the pressure off Jenna in order to protect the hard work he’s done and his future paycheck.

  All of this I understand, so why do I feel like there’s more to the story? I glance to the left of him at the granite countertop we made love on two days ago amidst a mess of sugar and flour. I’d felt euphoria then, but now? Now I just feel confused and uncertain. Like my world is about to quake beneath my feet when being with him this week stopped it trembling for the first time in months.

  And the discord I feel is reinforced when I meet his eyes. It’s in the expression written all over his face—a mixture of resigned regret and cautious trepidation—that tells me I’m not going to like the answer to the question I’ve just asked him. I know this look. He averts his eyes out the window and runs a hand up from his shoulder to his neck and back again.