HDU #2: Dirt (12 page)

Amanda sucked in
a deep breath once she’d asked her question.
 
She dropped her hands from Liam’s face, embarrassed by the
tingling heat behind her eyes.
 
That generally meant that tears were on the way but she thankfully, they
didn’t come.

“Amanda, I can’t
say no to him.”

“Yes you can.”

“I don’t want
to,” he said sternly.
 
“I need to
do everything right with this movie, Amanda.
 
I don’t want to fuck one thing up when it comes to this film
or my relationship with Terrence.
 
I want that Oscar, I want that next role, I want the big, stupid
paycheck.
 
I want all the things
that are going to make Logan’s life easier from now on.
 
You know what this means to me.”

Amanda
swallowed, her chest heaving with anger.
 
She opened her mouth to call Liam the idiot that she was certain he was
in that very moment but instead, her lips betrayed her.
 
“Fine,” she said begrudgingly, heaving
a sigh between her teeth.
 
She
glared up at him, her eyes still blazing despite her words of encouragement.
 
“I know you can do it.
 
I’m just scared.”

Liam pulled her
into his chest.
 
“I know,” he
laughed gently into her hair.
 
“It’s cute.”

“Now is not the
time to call me
cute
.”

“Alright.
 
I’m sorry,” Liam apologized, though
Amanda could still hear the tinge of charmed amusement in his voice.
 
She closed her eyes as she felt his
hands run through her hair.
 
“I don’t
mean to scare you.”

“Well you do.”

“I know.
 
But I promise you have nothing to worry
about, baby.”

Damn it
.
 
Amanda let herself melt into Liam’s body for a moment.
 
It was the first time he’d called her
baby and she’d never anticipated that it would feel so good.
 
“Just go and get it over with,” she
exhaled, her voice small despite her irritated words.

Amanda remained
standing at the edge of the pool as one of the assistants ushered Liam off to
get changed into swim gear.
 
She
was certain she had sufficiently calmed herself while he was gone but the
moment Liam returned in black swim trunks, Amanda felt her heart begin thumping
again.
 
In all fairness, it was
half because of how laughably good he looked — like an Olympic swimming
gold medalist, Amanda decided, though the Olympic-sized pool probably did
something to influence that image.
 
Studying Liam — the defined lines of muscle on all parts of his
body, the perfect, golden tan he had gotten from the North Carolina sun —
Amanda managed a real smile despite the fact that her knees were still
trembling with nervousness.
 
It
didn’t hurt that he kept his eyes locked on her the entire way to the end of
the pool, giving a wink before finally breaking his stare and appearing to put
on his game face to get serious.

Waiting at the
edge, two lanes of water separating her from Liam, Amanda did her best not to
scowl as the crew of assistants debated on the best deliberately nonchalant way
to film the video and make it look “totally impromptu — like we didn’t
just plan it.”

Finally, once
Terrence and a handful of others were poised with their smart phones in hand to
capture the swim, somebody blew a whistle.
 
Amanda froze with trepidation as she watched Liam’s long
frame jump into the pool alongside the similarly six-foot-plus Pararescue
reserve, performing a casual front flip before starting his underwater glide
across the fifty meters as if it were any normal day.
 
Eyes glued to the pool, Amanda felt her feet carry her body
beside Liam at the surface, her stare fixed on every last inch of him, prepared
to detect any odd movement, twitch or sign that he might be struggling.
 
By the time she had followed him for
over a hundred feet, Terrence and the others began a low murmur of excitement.

“See, Manda?
Look at this guy! No sweat!”

Amanda ignored
him as he kept following Liam with her eyes on nothing but his body.
 
Please
don’t let Terrence
jinx it
, she
prayed silently, watching Liam as he gave each smooth, deliberate kick to float
himself further up the pool.

“Oh, come on,
Liam, don’t slow down now!” Terrence suddenly shouted.
 
“That only makes it harder!” he added
with a laugh that unsuccessfully masked the actual anxiety in his voice.

Oh please God, no
.
 
Amanda felt her heart in her throat as
her feet slowed to a near stop.
 
Liam was slowing down.
 
Unless it was her imagination, he had actually
stopped
for a solid moment.
 
Without a second thought, she kicked off her heels.
 
But just as she prepared herself to
dive into the water, Terrence and the crew began their cheering again.

“Fuckin’ there
you go, buddy, he’s almost there! Manda, put your shoes back on!”

Amanda looked
back out at the water, realizing that Liam was not only swimming again but
yards ahead of her now.
 
Oh God, thank you God
.
 
She ran on her bare feet, as quick as
she could in her tight leather dress until she reached the end of the fifty
meter pool just as Liam touched the wall, letting the lifeguard at the other
end pull him out enough to grip the edge of the ground and suck in a long
breath of air as Terrence’s assistants ran to catch a final shot for their
videos.

She couldn’t
remember how she got there, but the next thing Amanda knew, she was kneeling at
the edge of the pool, her leather dress splashed with pool water and her hands
pressed against Liam’s jaws again, somehow as breathless as he was as she
planted kisses on his lips.

“Hey, let the
man catch his breath!”

Amanda ignored
Terrence, grateful to feel the strength in Liam’s touch as he cupped her face
back, returning her kiss.
 
“That
was really good,” she whispered, laughing despite how much her body still
trembled.
 
“But you scared the shit
out of me, asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” he
grinned through his panting, pulling away from her to look into her eyes.
 
“Christ,” he laughed breathlessly
before kissing her again.
 
“Don’t
cry.”

She shot him a
look.
 
“I’m not crying.”

“Okay.”

Amanda frowned
as she touched her face, realizing it wasn’t pool water on her cheek.
 
“Just come out of there, okay?” she
pleaded quietly, tugging on his arm.

Liam exhaled,
resting his head on the edge of the tile.
 
“Can’t.
 
Too tired.
 
You come here.”

“Okay.”

Prompting hoots
across the Aquatics Center, Amanda hopped into the pool, letting Liam pull her
into him, water from his wet eyelashes dripping onto the tip of her nose as he
kissed her, pulling away to catch his breath for long enough to kiss her again.

JUST
A VIDEO OF LIAM BRODY BEING SUPER HOT AND SUPERHUMAN

The Durt

July 3
^rd

Remember when we used to hate Liam Brody? Yeah.
 
Well, those days are long and far
gone.
 
How can you hate a man who’s
6’4, 220 pounds of pure muscle and dating the adorable and ever-jittery Amanda
Nathan? The poor girl most definitely flirted with a full-on panic attack last
night but at least she would’ve been hyperventilating with an absolutely gorgeous
new look while wearing the very latest Thierry Marc!

But starting from the beginning.

Last night, batshit crazy-but-mostly genius director, Terrence Rambis,
challenged Liam Brody to a swim off with just some ol’ Pararescue reserve at
the Aquatics Center at Chelsea Piers, daring the two real-life supermen to go
head-to-head in a 50 meter swim under water on a single breath of air because
risking the life of your film’s star is a thing that Terrence Rambis does.

In case you didn’t know, holding your breath for 50 meters is part of
the actual Pararescue training pipeline, which consists of such activities as
jumping from airplanes, diving into 130 foot deep waters, swimming 4000 meters
in under 80 minutes and other generally horrific/impossible tasks.
 
Most humans are incapable of completing
even one of these activities so don’t feel bad about yourself and how you’re
currently shoving Flavor Blast Fritos into your mouth while laying on your
couch with your laptop on your stomach.

Anyway.

Not to be morbid, but people totally pass out and sometimes die
attempting the 50 meter breath hold.
 
The good news is that Liam Brody is not one of those people.
 
In an approximately minute-long video
that has gone quickly viral since its 2AM upload, our favorite Hollywood
soldier swims gracefully across the pool at Chelsea Piers as girlfriend Amanda
Nathan stilettos across the surface beside him, having a very pitiful, very
fashionable nervous breakdown because watching your boyfriend risk his life can
sometimes be stressful.
 
Remarkably, however, Liam completes his swim beautifully and even
finishes a couple seconds before his real-life Pararescue counterpart.
 
Guess ol’ Rambis isn’t crazy after all
— Liam really
can
and
did
do everything an elite soldier does… so
someone call the Academy and put a ‘Reserved’ sticker on the statue for Best
Actor in a Leading Role ‘cause Superman’s got this shit on lock!

Anyway, after beasting the 50 meter challenge, a fairly breathless Liam
pulled himself out of the water enough to plant a long, reassuring kiss on the
lips of his spooked sweetheart, forever cementing his place in our hearts as
our collective pretend boyfriend.
 
And on the topic of that kiss, props to Amanda Nathan for being able to
kneel in that skintight leather mini! We see you getting more style savvy by
the day, girl, and we like it! We even like the fact that you decided to go big
and completely wreck your fabulous dress by jumping into the pool to be with
your god of a boyfriend — total fashion crime against an original Thierry
Marc, but never has something so wrong looked so completely right (and friggin’
adorable, by the way).

So, three cheers for Liamanda! You both are killin’ it and killing us
by being so damned cute.
 
Don’t you
ever change!

Chapter 5

With the alarm
on her phone ringing incessantly, Amanda stared up at her paint-chipped
ceiling.
 
She could tell that she’d
been officially introduced back into the Manhattan swing of things because
she’d barely gotten over Liam’s brush with death last night and yet she already
had something new to worry about: her first day working under Tom Vogel.

Since Terrence
had swept Liam away for some men-only bonding after leaving Chelsea Piers last
night, Amanda had gone home alone, which had been more than a bit of a bummer
for various reasons.
 
Perhaps she
had been riding his wave of adrenaline, but Amanda had been fully convinced of
two things after Liam’s completion of the insane fifty meter swim.

She wanted to
tell him that she loved him.

And then she
wanted to have sex with him.

Unfortunately,
she did neither and this time, it had more to do with Terrence Rambis than it
did her own nerves.
 
Thank you, Terrence
, Amanda thought
bitterly as she trudged across her studio into the bathroom.
 
Risk
my boyfriend’s life and then take him away from me after when all I want to do
is be with him because he’s alive and not comatose.
 
As she brushed her teeth, Amanda read
her text from Ian.

Maybe it’s for the better that it didn’t
happen last night.
 
You need all
your energy for work today — show those TV vets that Emmys don’t
intimidate you! You’re Amanda F*ckin’ Nathan.
 
You’re about to make Leadoff the best show on TV.
 
F*ck the competition.

With a mouth
full of toothpaste, Amanda snorted.
 
Along with his new role as the eternal optimist in her life, Ian was now
also that friend who censored his profanity.
 
She had yet to completely get used to all his new changes,
but as long as they helped him recover, she supported them.

Especially since
they hadn’t spoken once of Casey since he’d gotten out of rehab.
 
“
F*ck
the competition
” was about as close as they'd gotten and it was actually a
pretty huge step.
 
Rereading his
text, Amanda vaguely recalled something that Harper had said the day that had
first met, when Ian had briefly stepped away.
 
"Acknowledgement
is positive.
 
He needs to
eventually express all of his anger.
 
Hopefully, it will be in a positive way."

Amanda wasn't
exactly sure what a positive way of expressing anger was, but she certainly
hoped that Harper would help Ian find it considering what help she was good
for.
 
On her first day of work, she
was already suffering from a particularly bad case of the Mondays.

Stupid Casey.
 
Stupid Terrence
.
 
She blinked, her memories from before the fifty meter swim
returning.
 
And stupid Connor!

Amanda tore
through her closet as she recalled the double date at Lilac, realizing that
Connor actually couldn't have been more clear in his insinuations last
night.
 
Being the only person in
Liam's life who was aware of their initially contracted relationship, he knew
the most about her and he quite obviously judged her.

"She always knows exactly what she's
doing... She does move on quickly."

He was totally talking about how I dated
Dylan after Liam.
 
He thinks I’m
just some gold digger
, Amanda realized, grinding her teeth.
 
And
he thinks I'm going to suck at my job.

He couldn't have
been more clear with those insinuations either.
 
But unfortunately, to his credit, Amanda had been unable to
answer his questions about what exactly she could offer to
Leadoff
.
 
She had no
idea herself — though armed with her indignant Monday morning angst,
Amanda was suddenly determined to prove to Connor incredibly wrong and show him
how very capable she would be actually as a television writer.

Rifling through
her closet, Amanda finally landed on a first day ensemble that spoke to her,
pulling it on with haste.

Thank God for Wendy
.

Amanda turned to
her side as she checked out her reflection in her mirror.
 
The Thierry Marc pantsuit had been one
of the many Wendy-gifted additions to her wardrobe from the past few
months.
 
She had meant to get it
tailored so that the pants weren’t quite so long on her but since she hadn’t,
the three-inch heels she’d worn on her birthday would have to be her solution.

Fake it till you make it
.

Connor clearly
didn’t think that she had any idea what it meant to be a professional writer,
but even if she didn’t, she could at least fake it until she did.
 
And part of faking it, Amanda figured,
was dressing like someone in the industry.
 
Someone who had a sense of style to go with her confidence
and ability to run with the big shot TV veterans who had been nabbing Emmys
before she’d even entered high school.

“God
damn
, Amanda, look at you!”

Amanda’s eyes
fluttered with surprise upon stepping out of her building.
 
There was a lone paparazzo outside of
her apartment, which was for some reason more startling than a mob of
them.
 
Maybe it was his gravelly voice.
 
Or the fact that she hadn’t seen him
before when peering out of her curtain — something she did every morning
before stepping out.
 
Amanda eyed
the scraggly goatee she could see under the paparazzo’s low-worn green Mets cap
as she walked down the block with her arm raised, hoping for a cab to stop at
any second.

“I like this
look, this professional girl look.
 
And look at you, making those heels work for any occasion.
 
Good work — I’m a big fan!”

Amanda ignored
him, though her eyes narrowed for a second.
 
Did he really just notice that she was wearing the same
shoes as she’d been on her birthday? As a cab finally slowed at the corner of
her block, Amanda let herself take another peek at the lone cameraman.
 
She couldn’t see much below his cap but
that scraggly blonde goatee and an odd little smile as he stood still, his
Nikon lowered.
 
She hadn’t even
heard it snapping any pictures throughout her twenty second walk.

Really don’t have time to think about this
weirdo
, Amanda shook her head as she unzipped her cognac leather briefcase
upon sliding into the backseat of the cab.
 
It had an alligator handle, shiny golden hardware and a
price tag that exceeded even that of her new wardrobe combined.
 
Upon getting out of rehab, Ian had
gifted the stunning bag to her — as something of a thank you and a
congratulations for nabbing such a prestigious job.
 
Running her fingers along the buttery leather, Amanda
remembered his expression upon hearing the news of her spot on Tom Vogel’s
writing staff.
 
His instinct had
been that of shock, glee and the kind of Ian-like excitement that she was
relieved he was still capable of after everything he’d been through.
 
But then, after soaking in the news for
a couple minutes, there had been a hint of something else in his eyes.

“Kind of speaks
to how ass-kicking you are that you managed to accomplish this despite how many
times I almost screwed it all up for the both of us,” he’d said with a laugh
that didn’t quite mask the glint of shame in his eyes.
 
“I don’t think there’s enough air in my
lungs to apologize enough for all the shit I put you through.
 
But I promise I’ll make it right.”

Amanda stared
out the window as the cab drove up Third Avenue, the leather briefcase heavy in
her lap.
 
Ian had in fact put her
through more chaos and drama than she could have ever fathomed, but she hadn’t
forgotten the fact that she would’ve still been stuck in Merit, Missouri were
it not for him.
 
It had taken his
rash impulsiveness to get her to New York.
 
It had been his unwavering assertiveness that she’d relied
on throughout her unpredictable journey from small town nobody to beloved
celebrity.
 
He had been blindly
driven and unflappably passionate and while his high-risk personality traits
had benefited her greatly, they had led to his own messy downfall.

My fault
, Amanda swallowed as the cab
pulled up to the famous Waltman Global Media building in Midtown, where the
ZINC offices were located.
 
He saved me from Merit but I couldn’t save
him from Casey
.
 
She simply
hadn’t the instinct then, or the savvy.
 
She hadn’t the eyes to recognize the act of manipulation then.

But I do now.

Stepping out of
the cab, Amanda took in a deep breath.
 
Steady on her heels, she stood on the sidewalk, soaking in the towering
glass and steel presence of the famous Waltman Global tower with its fifty-one
stories and floor-to-ceiling windows, boasting clear views of all the bustling
activity inside.
 
Smoothing down
the front of her strong shoulder blazer, Amanda made her way for doors.

Connor, she
suddenly remembered, was the tiniest fraction of the reason why she
had
to succeed at her job at
Leadoff
.
 
The real reason was Casey.
 
For what she had done to Ian and what she could still very
well do to Amanda and to Liam.
 
Taking
down the show that drove Casey to pull all her diabolical little stunts wasn’t
a whole lot, but it was all Amanda had — at least for now.
 
And so she intended to go at it with
every ounce of force she had in her body.
 
That kind of effort, hopefully, would lead to finding more ways to bring
Casey and her little
Legacy
down.

Tightly gripping
the alligator handle on her briefcase, her nose held high in the air, Amanda
waltzed through the front doors and into the iconic building.

~

Her elevator
ride from the first to forty-eighth floor had indicated to Amanda that she’d
done everything right — worn the right suit, the right brand, the right
shoes and most certainly carried the right briefcase.
 
Even the Donna Karan-clad journalist whose face she
recognized from cable news had to pause and ask Amanda where her bag was from.
 
That was supposed to be a good omen, a
sign that all would be well on her first day of work.

Unfortunately,
as she stood in the doorway of the writer’s room at the ZINC offices on the
forty-ninth floor, Amanda was quickly realizing how misinformed she had been on
how to fit in with other television writers.

“Shit.
 
No one told the new girl that dress
code is business casual-meets-laundry day,” the middle-aged one in the stained,
hole-ridden Yankees jersey said while expertly spinning a pen between his fingers.

“Meets homeless
guy on Eighth Ave if we count you, Skip,” the long-necked guy next to him said
dryly.

“Har har.
 
Blow me, Bird.”

Amanda blinked
as she stood idly at the door, staring at the room full of men in their
twenties to fifties, all of them wearing simple jeans or khakis with their
ratty sports gear and plain T-shirts, many of which were stained with what she
assumed was Thai food considering the takeout boxes littering the rectangular
table they sat around.
 
The most
“dressy” of the writers was the youngest guy — a square-jawed
twenty-something in a flannel button up that was undone to bare the logo of his
Brown University T-shirt.

Shit.
 
This is bad.

As Amanda
nervously looked around, someone let out a belch.
 
A round of snickers followed her startled flutter of the
eyes.
 
Flustered, she desperately
scanned the room for Tom but found that he was nowhere in sight.
 
Amanda swallowed, feeling suddenly more
embarrassed by his absence.
 
He was
her only ally, the person who had somehow seen in her the right fit to join his
writers room of smirking, sneering and burping men who appeared wholly
disinterested in her presence.

“Yeah, I hate to
crush your fantasy about what it’s like to work in TV, but the writers room
isn’t exactly a place to wear stilettos,” said the flannel-wearing one while
staring at his computer screen and clicking around with boredom.

“Right,” Amanda
swallowed.
 
“I, um — ”

“Yo, Fish,” the
one in the Yankees jersey interrupted her, leaning back to flick a crumpled
piece of paper at the bored, flannel-clad Brown alum, whose name was apparently
Fish.
 
So, so far, there’s a Skip, a Bird and a Fish
, Amanda noted.
 
“You’re buying me lunch today,
asshole.
 
I told you Rangers by two
runs.
 
Hernandez always goddamned
chokes on the mound if he’s not pitching at home.”

“Shit, I
know.
 
Thank Christ Ono’s starting
tonight.
 
Fuckin’
one-point-eight-six ERA? Jesus.”

Crap.
 
Baseball terminology
, Amanda swallowed, feeling as if Fish had just
begun spouting a foreign language.
 
Nervously, she realized that she’d spent all her time in the past few
months getting to know the characters of the
Leadoff
script more so than the game that they played, which did
play a decent factor in the show considering it centered around a star New York
Yankee.