BRIAN (The Callahans Book 1) (54 page)

“Check out this unfortunate image of Devon Ray,” the announcer was saying, barely bothering to conceal his glee. “Taken in the very same hotel where he met his current girlfriend, former pizza delivery girl June Clark, now, this gets very interesting. We have footage of both Devon and June entering the very same hotel where this photo was taken, but footage of only one of them leaving — Devon.”

I snapped the television off again. This wasn’t working. I couldn’t do this. I had to leave right now.

I grabbed my phone and called Devon again, but there was still no answer. I stopped and thought hard about my next move for a full ten seconds before making it.

“Hello?”

I cringed at myself, at the way my nose was running, the tears that were mingling with that snot. I was such a mess. I should’ve just found a hole to crawl into to live out the rest of my days in blissful hermitage, but I was reaching out to the most unlikely of people instead.

“Hello?”

“It’s June, Trina,” I said at last. “June Clark.”

“Oh, June,” she said. “Oh, dear.”

“You’ve seen it.” The resigned horror in her voice told me everything I needed to know. I made a move to end the call, certain she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me after this, but she spoke up again.

“Of course I’ve seen it. Everyone in the entire world with access to the Internet or television has seen it.”

I wiped my face with the edge of the comforter. That definitely didn’t make me feel any better, but I stayed on the line because I didn’t know what else I could do.

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“I know you didn’t.”

“Why are you so sure?” I asked her, befuddled. “You don’t even know me.”

“June, I find I must remind you that I was with Devon for much longer than you were. And what’s always a package deal with Devon?”

I swallowed. “Chaz.”

“Chaz. That’s exactly right. This stinks of Chaz. That’s why I believe you. This is exactly something that Chaz would try and do.”

It was rewarding that Trina believed me, even if her support was completely unexpected. But that didn’t do very much to lessen my despair.

“Devon thinks you’ve poisoned me about Chaz,” I told her.

“I hope I’ve poisoned you about Chaz,” she said. “You can’t trust him with anything, June, and I do mean anything. The man wouldn’t tell you if you had something in your teeth before a red carpet.”

I sighed. “I let him style me before the Kelly Kane interview.”

“You did have a little too much makeup,” she allowed. “But you saw Kelly up close and personal. Too much makeup is basically her signature style.”

“I don’t understand how Chaz would’ve gotten that photo,” I said. “Yes, I took it. It was the day when we met, and both of us have been pretty open about that. But I deleted it.”

“You’re certain you deleted it?”

“Yes. Positive. Except that it was still on my phone.”

“It was what?” Trina’s voice was very nearly scandalized.

“It was in that recently deleted photo folder,” I said, my voice breaking. “That meant I deleted it, Trina, I’m telling the truth.”

“For fuck’s sake, June, don’t cry,” she said. “Just breathe. The photo’s still on your phone?”

“I did a screenshot and sent it to Devon right now,” I said.

“Why in the shit would you do a thing like that?” Trina demanded.

“I wanted to be honest,” I answered. “I told him I deleted the photo. I didn’t know that it had still been on my phone. I didn’t want to lie to him. He already thinks I’m a liar.”

“Okay. Delete the photo now so no one else can steal it.”

“Steal it?” I frowned. “You think someone somehow stole it from my phone? Is that even possible?”

“Look in the times we live in,” she said. “Someone either stole it or you gave it to someone.”

“No. I didn’t give it to anyone. The only ones who saw it were Devon and my grandmother. And Nana’s dead now.”

“You never sent it to anyone?” Trina asked again.

“I told you I didn’t. And I don’t do social media, so that’s out of the question, too.”

“Who has had access to your phone?” she asked without so much as taking a breath. Trina was really giving me the third degree, and an uncomfortable doubt started to creep into my psyche. What if she really wasn’t on my side? What if she just wanted to usher out my relationship with Devon so she could have him for herself again?

“June?”

“Sorry, I’m thinking,” I half-lied. My mind really had been racing, but it wasn’t focused on what she was asking me to focus on.

“I’m talking about anyone who even might’ve had access to your phone,” she said. “Devon, obviously. But what about Chaz?”

“I mean, I did spend a whole day with him, the day leading up to the interview with Kelly Kane,” I said. “I guess I had my phone with me, but I was too nervous to be poking around on it.”

“How can you go a whole day without looking at your phone?” Trina demanded as if that factoid was the most unbelievable one of the bunch.

“If you had to explain to America why you deserve to date its most desirable man, you’d be a little distracted and nervous, too,” I spat.

“What about during the interview?” she asked. “Where was your phone then?”

“In my purse,” I said.

“And your purse. Where was your purse?”

“With Devon. And Chaz. Backstage.”

“So he could have potentially had access to your phone during the interview?” Trina asked. “It’s possible, right?”

“Possible, but I don’t know if it’s probable. He was trying to communicate with me the entire time. And when shit really hit the fan, he was keeping Devon from charging on to the set.”

“Shit,” she remarked. “That would’ve been something, wouldn't it? People would still be talking about it.”

“People aren’t still talking about the interview?”

“No, dummy. They’re talking about Devon’s drunken double chin now. You should search it on Twitter. Some of the jokes are actually really funny.”

I felt a renewed surge of guilt. “That’s not funny, Trina. He’s so upset. I promised him I deleted that photo. I deleted it right in front of him. And now he thinks I’ve just been lying to him from the beginning about everything. That I was just waiting for this moment to really hurt him. Leading him on.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Trina sighed. “I know that you didn’t do it. I know that you feel bad about it. I know that Chaz is behind it somehow. But now we have to figure out how to get Devon to see the truth. He has a considerable blind spot when it comes to Chaz. It’s not going to be easy.”

“None of this is easy,” I told her. “I’ve learned that the hard way.”

“Where are you right now?” she asked.

“Dallas. Still in my hotel room. It’s surrounded by paparazzi. Devon just charged out, straight through everyone as they took his picture. I saw everything from my window. They’re waiting for me to do my walk of shame. I can’t. I’ll probably just starve to death in here. I can’t go out there.”

“Shit.” Trina was silent for a long time, but her sudden burst of laughter made me jump and pissed me off.

“I would love to know just what you think is funny about all of this,” I said slowly and angrily.

“Nothing except the solution to your problems,” she said. “Relax. Hold tight. Grab some chips from the vending machine. I’m going to call in a few favors. It might take a couple of hours.”

“I get it,” I said. “You’re in L.A.”

“Yes, but I have a few representatives in Dallas,” she said. I could hear the grin in her voice, and I once again had a stab of doubt. I was completely vulnerable right now. I’d reached out to the most unlikely of people because I didn’t have anyone else I could talk to about Devon. What if it was a terrible mistake? What if Trina was going to hang me out to dry?

“Okay, I’ll be waiting,” I said. “Will you call me when I need to do something?”

“June, believe me. When it’s time to make your move, you’ll more than know it. When it’s time, get out of there. Get to the bus station. And get your ass back to L.A. to win back your man. I’ll text you my address.”

“Okay.” I bit my lip. “Trina?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help women, June,” she said, and hung up the phone. Her statement would’ve been a little foreboding if I hadn’t been so desperate for relief from my self-imposed paparazzi siege. I wished I could’ve been braver — or at least maybe angrier. If I’d been super angry, like Devon had been, I could’ve pushed my way right past the photographers amassed outside. If possible, there were even more now than when I’d gotten here. They were eager to document this falling out. I peeked out the window, trying to disturb the curtain as little as possible, and was disgusted to see a familiar sight pull up — a pizza delivery from my former place of employment. It looked like the paparazzi was digging in for the long haul.

I didn’t know what Trina had planned for my rescue, but I didn’t have any other options at this point. I’d fucked up somehow. I just didn’t know how yet.

I felt a sudden panic. Trina had been quizzing me for the past fifteen minutes about who had access to my phone, and she’d been the one who grabbed it out of my purse back at the bus station in Los Angeles. All she’d done — or all I thought she’d done — was punch in her number in my phone. But what if she’d somehow known about the photo on my phone? Would that have been all it had taken for her to get it and screw me over?

The doubt I had was crippling that I was barely able to pull my clothes on. Who else could I turn to if not Trina? It made me regret letting all of my high school friendships languish after I graduated, and ignoring all possible friendships in my tour of duty through college to satisfy Nana because I was so busy with caring for her. I never even chatted casually with my coworkers at the pizza place. I hadn’t been there to work. I’d been there to earn money for us, but it was the human connections in this city that would’ve gotten me out of this scrape.

Now, I had to rely on a woman physically located across the country, a woman I barely knew, to help me in a way I couldn’t even imagine.

I pulled on a hoodie and tightened it around my face. Trina had promised I’d know it when it was time to go. I just didn’t want to miss my chance, whenever it came, and in whatever form it came.

I waited at the window for a long time, despair growing with each passing minute. She told me it might take a few hours. Was she planning on coming here herself? How would that even be possible? But I became convinced as the day waned into evening that it would’ve been faster for Trina to charter a jet and come here herself and flash the cameras or something — though I most certainly doubted that had been her plan, or that she was even willing to do such a thing for me.

My eyes widened, however, just after sundown, when a large tour bus pulled into the hotel parking lot. It stopped just short of the valet area, and bulky football players started pouring out of it. I had to blink several times before realizing I was witnessing dozens of Dallas Cowboys players stepping into the hotel parking lot in full gear like it was nothing. This was too strange to be a coincidence, and I realized that, beyond my expectations, this was the distraction Trina had planned.

I made a move to grab my backpack on the bed and slung it on my shoulder, shoving my phone and the rental car keys in the front pocket of my hoodie, when I froze again at the window. The team had formed several lines, and at the sudden boom of bass from the bus, began a choreographed dance routine.

I had to have been dreaming.

The paparazzi ate it up immediately, surrounding the football players, flashes going off in every direction. I almost forgot to flee for it. That’s how entrancing the sight of enormous football players dancing in synch was to me.

It was an easy thing to slip past the commotion, my hood firmly in place, once I was downstairs and outside, thankful for each and every player who somehow knew a dance routine that was engaging enough to distract the paparazzi long enough for me to get away

I called Trina as soon as I was on the road.

“Hello?”

“You’re friends with the Dallas Cowboys?” I exclaimed. “Seriously?”

“They’re all big fans,” she said, laughing. “How’d they do? I’ve only just now started seeing GIFs on Twitter. I’m a little disappointed. I would’ve thought it’d gone viral by now.”

“They did well enough to distract the paparazzi,” I said. “That’s all I care about.”

“Perfect,” Trina said. “Get yourself here, then, and we’ll worry about tackling Chaz then.”

I ended the call and focused on my driving. I didn’t know whether Chaz was the biggest of my worries right now or not. I was miserable that Devon thought I’d betrayed him, sure, and still worried about my parents drifting around in my periphery.

And I still wasn’t convinced that Trina was acting completely selflessly. I’d been burned before by this new life, and I wasn’t about to be made a fool of again.