BRIAN (The Callahans Book 1) (50 page)

“Devon’s been e-mailing me all these notes he apparently took when he met your—what did you call your grandma?”

“Nana.”

“Oh, yes, Nana,” Chaz said quickly. “Adorable. Anyway, he contacted me a while back, when he was in Dallas, that he had an idea—an award-winning idea—for his next project, and started sending me all these messages. A little old lady in a wheelchair with a sense of fashion that never grew old. A saintly granddaughter roped into taking care of the little old lady, forced to ignore her dreams, the famous celebrity who swoops in to rescue her from mediocrity. He said it was gold, and had it developed into a script. I think he’s looking to shop it around, but I secretly suspect he’s going to try to direct in it and star. It’s probably a shoo-in for at least one trophy.”

“It’s my life,” I hissed, too appalled to shout it. “He mined my life for this thing.”

“Is that what you’re upset about?” Chaz asked. “This thing is box-office money. A sure thing.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but the doorbell rang.

“This better be Devon,” I muttered angrily, marching to the front of the house.

“What? Who better be Devon? Devon’s here with me. I have eyes on him. He’s giving a really great interview. You can catch it tonight, when it airs.”

But I didn’t process any of that. I fumbled with the locks for a few long, painful moments before ripping the door open.

My mouth fell open and I nearly dropped the phone.

“Trina Henry,” I uttered, like some kind of idiot. She glowered at me, all six feet of her, her legs tanned with just the right amount of shimmery lotion applied to them. Each one practically reached my shoulder.

“Oh, Trina’s there,” Chaz said with surprise. “Devon mentioned that she would play the girl with the mediocre life, but I told him it might be too far of a stretch. Trina’s a goddess, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I’m Trina Henry,” she said as I gaped at her. “Who the fuck are you?”

I ended the call with Chaz, dazed at the arrival of every bronzed and buffed inch of Trina Henry on the doorstep of Devon’s house. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse — the interview, the horrible script about Nana and me — they did. I was in the middle of Hurricane Shitstorm. There was no escape.

I flinched and gasped as a cacophony of camera flashes blinded me, and I noticed for the first time that Trina had arrived with a platoon of paparazzi.

“Fucking vultures,” she said, grimacing and pulling her sunglasses down over her face, her blond hair falling down to frame it perfectly. “Listen, I don’t give a shit who you are. If you let me in this house right now, I will give you whatever you want. Literally anything.”

There wasn’t a tangible thing I wanted at the moment, but I stepped aside anyway. Trina all but leapt in, slamming the door behind her.

She pushed the sunglasses back up on top of her head. “So, you know me but I don’t know you. Care to introduce yourself?”

“I’m June Clark,” I said, my voice small, face to face with my biggest insecurity. Trina Henry, like her or hate her, was gorgeous. She was also Devon Ray’s ex-girlfriend. He’d assured me that he loved me for me, but when I was the one to follow someone like Trina, I had to wonder. I was average. I wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup. My hair was still wet from my shower, and wild. I hadn’t tried to style my new cut yet. And even though Trina was harried from a car ride and a swarm of paparazzi, there wasn’t a hair out of place.

“You’re June?” Trina blinked at me, and I could only guess at what was going through her mind. She was probably wondering what, exactly, Devon saw in me. I was right there with her.

“I am June,” I confirmed, though I wished, especially in this moment, that I could be someone else. Anyone else.

“Well.” She sighed and laughed at the same time. “Isn’t this fucking awkward?”

That was something else we could agree on, I supposed, nodding.

“Chaz told me Devon would be here, that he wanted to discuss an idea for a movie,” Trina said. “I’m guessing that Devon isn’t here.”

I shook my head. “Chaz is with Devon. At a late night show taping.”

“Ah. Good old Chaz. That bastard hasn’t changed a bit. That’s comforting — almost.”

My face must’ve shown just how confused I’d become. I wasn’t following Trina’s train of thought.

“You don’t know Chaz very well, do you?” she said, eyeing me critically. “He’s not to be trusted, that one. That’s lesson number one if you’re going to be with Devon, and the one I never learned to accept. If you’re with Devon, Chaz comes together with him as a package deal. There’s no Devon without Chaz. And Chaz is a snake.”

“I don’t understand.”

She shook her head at me. “And if you’re going to be with Devon, you’ve got to get over getting all google-eyed over famous people. We’re everywhere. We run in the same circle. You have to get used to it.”

Of all the things I expected out of this day, being lectured about proper behavior in Hollywood by my boyfriend’s ex wasn’t one of them. I wondered if I could crawl back into bed and screw my eyes shut and wake up in a different life. Or maybe I’d woken up today in an alternate reality. So many strange things had happened.

“June.” Trina took me by the shoulders and gave me a small shake. “Whatever you’re thinking about, stop it. Exist in this moment with me and understand something. I’m not here to antagonize you. Come on.”

I followed her into the kitchen because I didn’t know what else to do. She rooted around in the refrigerator until she produced a couple of bottles of beer and opened them against the edge of the countertop.

“You look like maybe you need a drink,” she said, handing me one.

“I don’t really drink,” I said. It had been forever since I’d had a beer. I couldn’t even remember the exact time I’d imbibed.

“That doesn’t mean you don’t need one,” Trina reasoned, clinking her bottle against mine. “Cheers to rolling through fucked up situations. It’s all we can do.”

“Cheers.” I slurped down a swig of my beer, the bubbles tickling my lips, and the muscles in my shoulders and neck relaxed immediately. Trina was at least right about this — I’d been in dire need of a drink.

“If I’d known it was just you here, I never would’ve come,” Trina said. “Fucking Chaz. I’m really sorry about barging in like this. Someone told the paparazzi I was coming here. It’s a feeding frenzy out there. I can practically write the headlines myself. ‘Trina show’s up at Devon’s to beg for him to take her back; is rebuffed by his new love.’”

I swallowed another gulp of beer. “That’s a pretty long headline.”

She smiled. “It’ll just be the entire cover of the tabloid. No picture necessary. All the better to imagine the horrific scene.”

“Let the record show that I let you in the house,” I said.

“And thank God for that.” Trina shuddered. “If I’d had to creep back to my car with all those assholes snapping my photo, I probably would’ve never forgiven you.”

I contemplated a Trina Henry who loathed me, and decided that letting her in had absolutely been the right decision.

“So Chaz told you to come here?” I asked.

“That’s right. To go over some movie idea Devon had. About a girl and her grandma, or something.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I was on the phone with Chaz when you got here.”

“So Chaz lied. Wasn’t the first time, won’t be the last.”

“I don’t think he lied about the movie,” I said. “Just the circumstances. I found a movie script. It is about a girl and her grandma, but it’s my story. About Nana — my grandmother. And how Devon and I met.”

Trina narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think I’m following. The movie’s about you?”

I nodded. “Devon used me. He only got close to me because he saw something he could use. Something he could exploit. I never wanted any of this, but he was the one who insisted on getting close to me.”

“That doesn’t sound like something Devon would do,” Trina said. “Sure, Devon’s kind of an idiot sometimes, but he’s not an asshole like Chaz is. This is pure Chaz. Let me help you get to the bottom of this.”

She whipped out her cellphone and dialed, putting it on speakerphone to my uncomfortable surprise. I expected Chaz to pick up, like he had when I’d called Devon earlier, but I was mistaken.

“What’s going on, Trina?” Devon said, his voice warm. “How are you?” His friendliness made everything that much worse, even if I knew Trina was on my side with everything.

“I’m fine, Devon, just a little confused,” she said. “Chaz said you’d be at home right now to go over some movie about a girl and her grandma.”

“Shit, no. I’m in L.A. I won’t be at the house for another hour. Chaz must’ve gotten the time screwed up.”

“That’s not the first thing Chaz has gotten screwed up,” Trina said sourly.

“I really hope you didn’t just call me to bitch about Chaz,” Devon said. “I’d really like you to be in on the movie, Trina. Can’t you get over your hatred of him?”

“That’s another conversation for another time,” Trina said. “Tell me about the movie.”

I didn’t understand what I hoped would happen at that point. I wanted Devon to talk about some other project. I wanted him to prove me wrong. I wanted what I saw to just be some awful misunderstanding. I wanted to forget what I’d seen.

“I think it’s going to be great,” Devon gushed instead, making my face fall. “I’ve experienced so many incredible things in the past few weeks. I know there’s a movie in there. I just know it, and it’s going to be amazing.”

Trina and I sat there and listened as he briefly outlined us meeting, the trip to Hawaii, Nana’s death, everything that I’d read in the script in the study.

“But don’t you think June might be upset that her privacy is being compromised?” Trina asked, abruptly cutting off Devon in the middle of a sentence. “I mean, it’s her life, Dev.”

“I think she’ll be fine with the script,” he said after a long pause.

“Devon, have you even told her about it?”

“Not yet,” he said. “She’s going through a lot of adjustments right now, and I don’t want to spring it on her. Plus, there are some other things I want to add in there. Did you see the interview with Kelly Kane the other night? That has to go in there.”

I choked on my beer, and Trina swiftly took the call off of speakerphone.

“I think you’re making a mistake with this movie, Devon,” she said, maintaining eye contact with me. “A big mistake. Yes, I really do. Well, I’m not going to be here when you do. We’ll have to talk about it later. No, I’m not going to stick around. Some asshole clued the paparazzi in on it. Yeah, that’s a cluster fuck. Bye.”

Trina took a long pull of her beer after she locked her phone’s display before saying anything.

“You know, I broke up with Devon because of Chaz,” she said. “Chaz was all the time coming between us, trying to orchestrate fights, all to get attention from gossip sites and shit. It was the worst.”

“That sounds terrible,” I agreed, glum, shattered. The Devon I’d heard on the phone, the one that had been talking excitedly to his ex-girlfriend, sounded like a stranger to me. When he’d spoken cautiously about me to her, it was as if he knew what he was doing really was wrong. I had to hand it to Trina, though. She didn’t let him off the hook.

“I really thought this was a Chaz thing,” she said. “All of it smells like Chaz.”

“Only Devon really wants to make this movie,” I said. “Everything Chaz told me about it was true.”

“It doesn’t make sense, June.”

It didn’t. That was yet another point I could agree with Trina on. None of this made sense. Devon and Chaz had more or less forced me to do the disastrous interview with Kelly Kane. How could Devon possibly think that I wanted even more attention and scrutiny on my life? The movie was too personal. It was too private. I would never think of sharing Nana with the world in that way. And now Devon wanted to add elements from the interview. I bet I could guess just which parts he’d be interested in featuring — the parts where Kelly had tried to force me to reunite with my parents in front of a massive live viewership.

“June, I’m sorry for all of this,” Trina said, jolting me out of my lop of despair. “This situation sucks. It isn’t fair to you. When I see Devon, I’m going to tell him just exactly what I think of his movie. And his little lackey, Chaz.”

I shook my head. “You don’t have to do that. I think I’m done.”

“Done? Done with what?”

I gestured uselessly around the kitchen with all its gleaming gizmos and gadgets. “This. Everything. Devon. I don’t understand why he was shopping that movie, why he thought it was a good idea. He was there, when I found Nana. He knew how badly I took it. I thought … I thought it bonded us together, made us closer, but all he thought about was a movie deal.”

Trina swept her now-empty beer bottle into the trash can with a crash. “I’m so angry. And sad. This shouldn’t be happening to you.”

I didn’t understand why, but as I guzzled the last of my beer, I was happy that Trina was validating my own raging feelings. It just felt good to have someone in my corner.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, leveling a look at me. “Because you’re going to have to do something, June. You just can’t roll over and take this. You know that, right?”

“I know.” I picked at the label of my beer bottle. “Earlier, when you were outside, standing at the door, you said that you’d give me anything I wanted if I just let you inside.”

Trina bit her lip. “That’s right. I did say that.”

“Can I ask you a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Could you give me a ride to the nearest bus station?”