All three men block my path to Trudi, as if I’d actually hurt her. Would I? Fuck no, even if I’d like to wring someone’s neck for fucking my shit up with Lou. Because that’s exactly what this is going to do.
I hold my fists up, take a deep breath, exhaling slowly, shaking my fingers loose. “Okay. I’m okay. I’m—I don’t understand what I just saw. Why the fuck would a show, one I agreed to do in order to help my public image, make me look like an ass who can’t decide between two women?”
Trudi peeks around the group of men guarding her. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad.”
“Sure as fuck looked like it to me. That footage was finessed and massaged, and I was sound bited to fucking death, to the point that the world now thinks I’m engaged to fucking Arianne and screwing around on the side with Lou.”
My jaw ticks. I wait. They all look at each other. The longer they avoid eye contact, the more it drives through me that they all knew exactly how this was going to go down. Still, no one looks at me until I slam my fist through the cabinet door over the sink.
They all back up, crowding against the divider between the living area and the bedroom behind them.
My knuckles throb. “Well? Anyone want to explain this shit to me?”
Trudi pushes her way to the front, holding her hands out as though she’s trying to calm a rabid dog. “Buck, it’s all marketing. Besides, your contract allows the show to edit as it sees fit. This is the angle the director wants to play. It’s out of my hands.”
* * *
I pace the length of my room as I dial my manager.
“Buck! I was just going to call you. How’s it going down there in the other LA?”
“It’s going to shit, man. Did you see the show?”
He coughs. “Sure. Sure. I saw it. It was good.”
“Good? Have you lost your god damned mind?” My voice echoes off the walls.
“No, it’s good. Don’t worry.”
I rub the deepening crease between my eyebrows. “Exactly what is good about it?”
“Well, I just got a call from Razor Wire Productions today. Seems they want to give you the lead role. This is it, man—the big time.”
Thoughts scatter across my brain like a box of ten penny nails dropped on the shop floor, each with its sharp end pinging into me before it lands and rolls across the landscape of my predicament. Lead role. McDowell—Arianne’s father, Norman McDowell. The show and the implications of the way it was presented.
Fuck. Now I’m truly screwed.
“I don’t want Arianne. I never wanted Arianne for more than a fuck or two. She latched onto me.”
Bob’s sigh comes through the line loud and clear, every bit of his frustration with me evident with that one breath. “Look, Buck. It’s simple. Play along until the contracts for the film are signed, okay? Let things ride the way they are. They’re making Lou look like the interloper.”
“Exactly, but that’s not what she is. She’s important, Bob.”
“Okay, so explain it to her. She’ll understand. She’ll want your career to do well, right?”
Fuck if I know.
I pat Tuffy on his silky head. “Shush. I’ll be back later, Buddy.”
I let myself out the backdoor, into the dark. At the edge of Delores’s lawn, I text Lou.
I creep up the rear stairs. Lou stands, arms crossed, foot tapping, just outside the glass door leading into the kitchen.
“Why aren’t you entertaining your fiancé?”
I run my hands through my hair. “Aw, Lou. Don’t be like that. You know she isn’t my anything. I broke it off with her weeks before I even came home. That woman’s just a mental patient waiting to happen—one breakdown away from being picked up by the men in little white jackets.”
“Crazy, is she?”
“She’s something. But she’s not my girlfriend, much less my fiancé.”
“You sure about that? Because it seems like that show of yours is trying to make this whole thing look like something else.”
Through clenched teeth, I say, “Fuck what the show’s doing. Trust me on this. She’s nothing to me—less than nothing. They’re just vying for ratings, and the way my contract is written, there’s squat that I can do about it.”
Her sigh seems to echo through the trees. “So you weren’t staring longingly at Arianne while you held my hand under the table?”
“Fuck no. Lou, when I’m with you, I’m with you. You’re all I can see.” Everything about this grates me the wrong way. “Did it seem like I missed her to you?”
She looks to the deck and runs her bare toes along the edge of the board at her feet. “I guess not.”