by Natasha West
‘Hey’ Denise hissed, a scotch in her hand. ‘What are you two doing?’
Ruby internalised a very angry sigh and said, ‘Exactly what you told us to do two minutes ago.’
‘I didn’t say you needed to get sloppy all over each other, did I?’
‘Mom-’
‘Emily? Maybe you should mingle?’ Denise said pointedly.
Emily looked back and forth between Ruby and Denise. She slipped out of Ruby’s grasp, saying, ‘OK then Denise.’ She walked away, sucked into the crowd. Ruby noticed her intercepted by the last person she wanted to see. Rock.
But before she could worry too much about that, Denise stepped in very close to Ruby. It took everything Ruby had not to step back but this was the dance she always did with her mother. Holding the line, in all senses.
‘I know what’s going on’ Denise said, through a smile that the rest of the room would see and not think twice about. But Ruby could feel anger behind her mother’s ice-white teeth. ‘Oh? Do you mind telling me?’ Ruby quipped.
Denise gave a short little chuckle, no trace of mirth contained in it. ‘I know about the fun and games that were going on at your place.’
Ruby felt her stomach turn over. This had just gone from average unpleasantness to deeply intrusive. ‘Fun and games, huh? I’m assuming you’re not talking about Scrabble.’
‘You know how bad of an idea that was? You don’t want to tangle with this girl any more than you already have.’
‘Tangle. Interesting word’ Ruby said as some guy with a man-bun shoved past her.
‘You need to keep things business with her’ Denise said, still smiling. ‘I don’t care what the hell happened in Vegas, you knew where the line was. And you crossed it. If you fuck with this girl, you could get her all… Upset. You know how people are. She could go to the press. That’s how careers are broken.’
‘She signed an NDA. What’s the worst that could happen?’
‘Because no one ever broke one of those, right? You might wanna put CNN on occasionally, Ruby’ she scoffed. ‘People break agreements when the stakes get too high. When they think it’s worth the cost.’
Ruby was just about done with her mother’s condescension. ‘And what stakes would they be?’
‘Attachment, love, pick your poison’ Denise said.
Ruby looked down at the carpet, at its geometric retro pattern, and said something that almost broke her. ‘Mom. I’m going to say this once and then I don’t ever want to have this conversation with you again, alright? You don’t have anything to worry about. Emily doesn’t love me. We slept together once and that’s all it was. It was sex and it was nothing to her. Now shut the fuck up, would you?’
Denise’s eyes narrowed at Ruby and cogs whirred behind her eyes in a way that Ruby didn’t remotely like. ‘Christ’ Denise breathed.
‘What?’
‘Never mind’ Denise said. ‘Just never fucking mind.’ Denise turned away and scanned the room. ‘Shit, there he is.’
Ruby turned to see the ‘he’ in question. There he was, Barry. Ruby felt something die in her at the thought of becoming his performing monkey again while her mother ground the organ. She was fucking sick of the whole bullshit cycle.
‘Oh and looky there. There’s Marisa Benson, chatting him up. Shocker’ Denise muttered.
Ruby looked to Barry’s side and her mother was right, Marisa was smiling and nodding, listening to something he was saying.
‘You need to get in there’ Denise instructed her.
Ruby gave her mother a hard look. ‘Tell you what? Why don’t I just rip my face off and you can wear it and go over there and stick your tongue as far up his ass it it’ll go’ Ruby murmured angrily.
Denise looked around her for a moment, watching for anyone with an ear out. But everyone was busy with their own shit. Feeling safe, her smile fell away. ‘Do you think this is a game?’
‘I do, actually. This whole thing has been one long game and I’m sick of it.’
Ruby turned on her heel and walked off, her heart in her mouth. For every time she’d ever told her mother to shove it, this felt different. She couldn’t say what was dissimilar about this moment as opposed to any other blow up, but if pressed, she’d say she had reached her limit. A limit on hypocrisy and disingenuousness. She thought maybe it had something to do with being around someone who felt more real to her than anyone she’d ever met. It was like eating tinned food your whole life and then being handed a beautifully cooked steak. It was hard to go back to processed shit.
She wanted to take a shower, wash off every lie she’d told in the last few weeks, wash off the person her mother had moulded her into. All she wanted to do now was be honest. Real.
And if that was the case, if she was going to be honest, there was one person who needed the truth. Even if she didn’t want to hear it.
Twenty-Seven
Emily couldn’t believe Denise’s timing. Ruby had been going to kiss her and for the briefest moment, she’d wondered if maybe she wasn’t just doing it for the snap. Something in her eyes…
But along came the boss, clearly trying to break things up before they could start. Emily wasn’t surprised by that, this was the whole reason for her sudden policy of micromanagement over this very public marriage. She was trying to ensure Emily didn’t attempt to seduce her daughter into a dead-end marriage. That was patently crazy, but Denise looked at the world through a deeply cynical lens.
Maybe it was for the best though. Another kiss would just be something else to torture herself over. God knows, she was stocked up in that department.
As she mulled the whole mess over, wandering through the throng of over coiffed party goers, she ran into Rock. Well, ran into wasn’t really the term. She felt quite targeted. It was as though she were the weak member of the herd and the moment she was separated, Rock had picked her off.
‘Hi!’ he said too enthusiastically. ‘Emily, right?’
‘Yes. Hello Rock’ Emily replied with a thin smile.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d remember me’ Rock said with faux modesty.
‘You’re the man that kisses my wife. Not likely to forget that, am I?’ Emily said, half joking. She’d seen three episodes of Wolfwater Cove now and it stung to see Ruby kissing this pillock, even though she knew Ruby didn’t really enjoy it. But that was jealousy. It was illogical.
Rock laughed a bit too hard. ‘Guess not.’
Emily looked around the room for rescue but Ruby and Denise looked deep in conversation. Emily dreaded to imagine the topic.
‘So how’d you guys meet?’ Rock asked with more interest than Emily thought decent.
‘On a flight’ Emily said. She had a detailed account now, provided by Ruby. But she still thought it better to keep it simple. She didn’t have Ruby’s gift for weaving a tale, and besides, the less she said, the better. Rock was being weird, she could smell it a mile off.
‘When was that?’ he asked.
‘Six months ago’ Emily quickly replied, meaning to try and get off this track, change the conversation.
But he was keen to keep it on course. ‘Six months and you guys got married. Wow, that’s fast.’
‘You don’t know the half of it’ Emily said with a quick smile. ‘But when you know, you know’ she said, her eyes straying again to Ruby. And it was no lie. She did know. Too bloody bad it had happened this way. Emily had never had a chance. She wasn’t sure what the perfect conditions to allow love to blossom between them might be, or indeed if there was such a situation. But this? Trying to find real love while being asked to fake it simultaneously? Preposterous. She didn’t know how she’d ever imagined she could come out of this unscathed. Her reputation didn’t matter anymore, she’d meant everything she’d said to Ruby about that. What mattered to her now was the dwindling time she had left with the woman who’d made her fall off a cliff, smashing herself up on jagged love rocks.
‘So did you plan to get married in Vegas or…’ Rock asked.
Rock’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, wait, didn’t Ruby say you guys planned to do it that way?’
Emily blinked. ‘Oh, no. I mean…’
Rock gave a small laugh. ‘Well, that was easier than I thought it was going to be.’
‘What do you mean? What’s easy?’ Emily repeated, suddenly nervous.
‘Tripping you up. You should really get your stories straight. This isn’t amateur hour’ Rock sneered.
‘Rock, what are you talking about?’ Emily asked, her fear growing.
Rock rolled his eyes. ‘You want me to spell it out? You guys aren’t real. I had you checked out.’
‘You did what?’ she gasped.
‘Yep. I had you looked into. Emily Bartlett, right? You shouldn’t tell strangers your name when you’re getting coffee.’
My god, the hipster couple. They weren’t Ruby fans. They were investigating her!
‘There’s nothing to connect you two before Vegas. No flights, no skypes, no calls. Nothing. What, did you just meet there and concoct all this on the fly?’
Emily’s lips parted in horror. ‘I… no, you’ve got it wrong. I don’t know what you’ve been told, but we met six months ago…’
‘Jesus. How fucking stupid does Ruby think I am?’ Rock said, not really to Emily. ‘A fake marriage for publicity? It’s the oldest trick in the book.’
‘It’s not fake’ Emily said desperately. She only had one true thing to cling onto. ‘We are married.’
Rock laughed. ‘Emily, let it go. You’re done. I know all about your wedding.’
Emily’s brow knitted. ‘What do you mean?’
Rock smiled smugly and got out his phone, turning it to Emily and hitting play on a video.
It was a security video from behind a counter, the corner caption read, ‘Chapel 1.’ Two women staggered up to meet the guy manning the desk. You could only see the man’s back but Ruby and Emily were clear as day. Emily, obviously hammered, seemed to be leading the charge. ‘Sir, we’d like to get married please.’
‘That’s right’ Ruby said. ‘We’ve found each other in this terrible desert of neon tonight and we want to be together forever.’
There then followed a lingering kiss between Emily and Ruby that was embarrassing to watch with Rock. The guy on the desk then ask for ID’s, which Ruby and Emily produced. After he’d checked out Emily’s passport, he asked for the marriage license.
Ruby looked at the guy for ten seconds, processing the request slowly. ‘Huh? We don’t need a license. This is Vegas!’
‘I’m afraid you still need a license, which you have to get from city hall. Which is closed right now. It’ll also take a little longer to get the license as one of you is from outside the US. A couple of days.’
In the video, Emily and Ruby looked at each other in drunk surprise. In real life, Emily watched in equal astonishment.
In the video, Ruby shrugged and said, ‘Fine. But we’ll be back! We’re in love!’
Emily agreed. ‘Yep. Totally in love.’
The registrar congratulated them and then said, ‘In the meantime, we can offer you a ceremony. It’s not legal but it can be a nice moment anyway. It comes with two silver-affect rings and a commemorative certificate. It looks like a marriage certificate but of course, it’s not real, no seal or signatures. It’s just intended as a novelty item.’
‘How much?’ Ruby asked.
‘$299. Plus tax.’
‘Sold!’ Ruby said. ‘Let’s do it.’
‘Yeah, let’s do the ceremony’ Emily agreed and then she leant in to Ruby. ‘Then we can go back to my hotel room.’
Ruby pulled Emily close and said, ‘Now you’re talking.’ They kissed passionately again, while the registrar turned discretely to his printer.
Rock chose that moment to shut the video down. He put the phone back in his pocket. ‘See, you can lie all you want, but the video doesn’t. I can’t wait to make this sucker viral.’
Emily was still processing the news that her and Ruby weren’t actually married but there wasn’t much time to work out what that meant in the long run because Rock was rubbing his hands in glee. ‘Rock, please, don’t do that’ Emily pleaded.
‘Why the hell shouldn’t I? That little bitch has been acting like she’s better than me since day one. Now people are going to see what a manipulative little liar she is. Pretending like you two were in love and married, getting all those clickbait articles written about it, getting herself trending. When all along she just hooked up with a stranger and faked it’ he spat. ‘This will screw her with the studio. Barry won’t even think about giving her that movie. Fuck, this will screw her for everything. I’m gonna turn her into the worst train wreck since Lindsey Lohan.’
Emily took a deep breath, trying to think her way out of this mess. ‘So why say anything?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m asking why you’re going around the houses with this. You could have just gone ahead and uploaded the video. But you came and talked to me first.’
‘You’re no dummy, are you?’ Rock said with a horrid wink.
‘I like to think not’ Emily said, trying not to shudder.
‘OK, here’s the thing’ he said, leaning in conspiratorially. Emily tried not to lean away. ‘I’ve heard Ruby’s probably gonna get that movie.’
Emily raised an eyebrow. ‘Who told you that?’
‘I just know, OK? My cousin works for another exec at the studio and he’s buddies with Barry’s assistant. She’s in’ Rock said dismissively.
Emily took that news in for a moment, in equal happiness and sadness. It was bigger news than Rock understood, for a number of reasons.
But Rock wasn’t finished. ‘Which means she could get me in. I’m not asking for male lead but a third or fourth billing could really bump my stock right now. All she has to do is get her mom to negotiate me in, get it put in her rider that I get a part. She could drop her fee a little if she needs to.’
Emily shook her head at Rock. ‘That’s what all this is about?’
‘Yeah. You’re gonna broker that deal with her for me, alright?’
‘You piece of…’ Emily began, angry. She saw a head swivel next to her. She had to keep calm, or she was going to blow everything, one way or the other. ‘Why do you need a messenger?’ she asked, her voice more level.
‘Because she hates me way too much. If I say any of this to her, she’d blow up her own career out of pure spite. But you? You can lay it out for her, all nice. Tell her I’m serious and tell her it makes sense to play ball. OK?’
Emily looked closely at Rock. He was grinning about all this, but underneath, Emily saw something else. ‘You’re scared of her, aren’t you?’ Emily asked him.
‘I’m not scared of anyone’ Rock snapped. Emily didn’t believe him in the slightest. But it didn’t matter. He had evidence of the apparently fake wedding and he would pull the trigger if he had to, Emily was sure. She needed a second to think. None of this was right and honestly, she didn’t think there was anything she could say that would make Ruby go for his little offer. Allow Rock to blackmail her? Rock was right. Ruby would probably upload the video herself.
But if Emily didn’t at least try to see what could be done, Ruby’s career was about to be… Actually, Emily didn’t know if Rock was exaggerating about it being blown to smithereens. She didn’t know enough about this town to really understand its complex machinations. But the movie, yes, she would probably lose that. Barry would find out they’d been mugging him off this entire time and it wouldn’t matter how talented she was, or how cheap. Barry would put an X next to her name. Emily didn’t want that. Denise thought she was the only one looking out for Ruby’s future, but she was wrong. If this was what Ruby wanted, Emily wanted it for her too. Even if she never saw a penny of the promised payday, she’d do whatever she could.
Which me
ant, ughhh…
‘OK, Rock. Fine. Let me speak to her.’
‘Good girl’ Rock said. Emily nearly slapped him. Instead, she went to the bar where she promptly necked a gin and tonic. And then a second. She needed a minute to get her head together. She couldn’t understand how she’d gotten here. In Los Angeles, in the thick of lies and deceit. She was so far from home, she might as well have been standing at the bottom of the ocean. Her brother had been right. This place did have a seedy underbelly.
And she’d never needed to be here. Because the certificate was fake. If she’d looked a little closer at it, maybe she’d have figured that out and maybe she’d never have come here and taken this deal and gotten herself wrapped up in all this and she’d never have spent time with Ruby and let all these pointless feelings grow, never have slept with her, never have fallen for her… None of it needed to happen.