Hollywood Lies (29 page)

Jesse comes over the next week and doesn’t show any inclination to leave. I’m sure he worries about me, but I don’t want to be around him right now. Of course, he knows me too well, so he already knows I want him gone, but he stays.
 

“Why don’t you work on some music? There hasn’t been a new Highland song in a while.”

Music makes me remember how Devon and I could mess around on the guitars for hours. “No. I’m not interested in music right now.”

“You know where this is going to lead.”

Of course I know where it’s going to lead, and while I see the two paths laid out before me, I don’t have the energy to choose which one I’ll walk, so I let it pick me. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me. It matters to a lot of people. We don’t want to see you—”

“So go away and don’t watch.” My abrasive words and tone won’t convince him of anything other than how right he is. “I’m fine, you know.”

“Right. Fine.” Jesse puts his arms over his chest and settles back into his chair as if he plans to be here all night.
 

The idea of it ticks me off. Time to be a bitch. “What? Afraid to leave because I might do something worthy of the ridiculous documentary you’re making? Where’s your camera?”

Jesse shakes his head. “Cole, please. Try as you might, you know you can’t push
me
away, and I don’t care about the damned documentary. If I did, I would have sold it when you disappeared all those years ago. I was offered a million for it.”

“So now it’s probably worth two million. Just wait until I die. It’ll probably go for ten.”

“Cole, you know I—”

“I don’t know anything except that I want you to leave so I can—”

“Isolate yourself until going back to drugs is a viable option to your warped mind?”

He can’t stay forever, so I wait him out. Turns out, Jesse’s right. My addict’s mind easily falls into its old patterns of thinking.

It starts with the Ambien, but then that doesn’t last long enough, so my doctor switches me to a lorazepam, which I think is great because my anxiety is skyrocketing again. Then I start to take the medication I have standing prescriptions for the residual pain I sometimes feel from all of my surgeries. I like hydrocodone, but opiates become a close friend.

I’m not going to lie. It feels good to go through the day like this. I have no work right now. I don’t want any. No responsibilities. Sometimes I think I want to write a song and release it under Highland, even though I haven’t touched a guitar in so long. My poetry book is untouched on the shelf. Honestly, I just want to sit on my couch and stare at the wall and think absolutely no thoughts at all.

So I do.

But before long, the familiar itch of wanting something stronger to numb the thoughts starts twitching just beneath my skin, and I find myself going to old places, doing things that I stopped doing years ago.

“Cole, don’t do this.”

I turn to Xavier. Deep in my heart, I know this hurts him, and I don’t want to hurt Xavier. He has been with me for so long, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t stand to feel like this anymore. “I don’t pay you to care.”

“You pay me to protect you, and that shit’s no good.”

I flick the needle and tighten the band.
 

“And you don’t have to pay me to care. I just do.”

His words give me pause for all of a few seconds, but the addict in me has come out again. She doesn’t give a shit about who says they care for her or not. She needs this. She wants this. And there is nothing in the world that can stop her now. “Leave.”

“I’m not going to.”

“You’ll go wait outside, or you won’t have a job. Like I need you. You’re not my dad.”

“You need a daddy right now to smack some sense into you.”

“But you’re not him.”
 

“I’m going to call Mr. Miller.”

I laugh. “Call Jesse. I don’t care. Tell him to bring his camera. I’m sure he won’t want to miss my long awaited slide down this spiral.” I hold my arm out to him. “Look, you can either stay and watch me do it, or you can leave the room, but either way, it’s going to happen.”

“Cole,” X says again.

My heart beats harder. I know what I’m doing. I know the consequences of it, and while I’m prepared to lose people I do actually care about, the ache inside of me hurts too much to say no right now. People who don’t know this kind of pain simply cannot know.
 

Xavier must see that I’m being honest and mean what I say because he just shakes his head and walks into the next room.

I can’t keep the smile from my lips as the familiar poke, slide, and pop happens. In an instant my world slows down and the most heavenly bliss settles over me. I remember my true love.

Chapter 13

Devon

Maybe it’s stupid, but being with Liliana makes me feel cool. When I talk, she acts like every word I say has some special meaning. She’s fun and free, always pushing me to be like her, too, but she mentioned in some interviews about how I’m so mature and intelligent and thoughtful, and how
she
wants to be more like me as well.

The studio won’t let us be an actual public couple. It seems the world is enamored with this
are they or aren’t they
thing we’ve got going on. So we’re not allowed to be as truthful as we want to be about our relationship; so we settle for working little things into interviews.
 

Lili is great at playing coy and planting just the tiniest of seeds that we’ve got something special going on.
 

We’ve been shooting the second movie,
Tortured Love,
for a month now, and it’s just about perfect to be able to spend nearly twenty-four hours in her company. Okay, it’s not perfect. Liliana can be a little grating when all I want to do is play some music or talk about something other than the movie, reporters, the A-list, or what one of the other cast members said. But all in all, things are good with her—for now.

My stomach tightens as my limo pulls up to the long red carpet for the premier of
Reflections,
the movie
Cole directed and I starred in months ago. Liliana is a few cars behind me. The studio said it was okay she comes as support, but we’re not to have contact. That might make people believe that we’re really a couple. We can’t let that slip until we’re promoting the third
Tortured
film. By then, people will be stampeding to see us as Jamie and Maya, and see our love come through the screen, but right now, they need us to build some anticipation for them.

That’s what the studio says, at least.

I really wish Lili could be by my side tonight. I know I’ll have to take a bunch of pictures with Cole. On one hand, I’m excited to see her again. Cole is always so beautiful, and I’d love to have the opportunity to let her know that I still care for her. Plus, if she ever wants to just hang out, I’m open to it.

On the other hand, though, there is that pit in my belly where the guilt I feel lives. When I see Collette, I know that no matter how gorgeous she is, I’m going to feel like shit for falling out of love with her. If that was even what happened.

But that is the thing, isn’t it? I never did fall out of love with her as much as I just saw another opportunity.
That’s
why the guilt kicks my ass. Because I loved Cole, and just because her lifestyle didn’t fit me, I dumped her and started something with Lili.
 

The door opens, and I get out. Flashbulbs pop nonstop for the first minute, then I’m ushered by Natalie down the carpet because I can barely see anymore. No matter how many have gone off around me, my eyes haven’t gotten used to the camera flashes.

The one thing I can see is Cole. She stands a few yards in front of me, smiling her camera smile at the reporters, waving at the fans. She rocks a tight-fitting gold dress with heels that make her taller than the journalist she talks to. Thin shimmers of gold adorn her ankle, wrist, and neck. I don’t know why, but those little strands reflecting the photographers’ flashes seem to elevate her. She looks immortal; a fiery-haired goddess from Olympus.
 

Instant lust floods my body. I almost get lost in it until I remember that I broke up with her.
 

I have Liliana, and I’m doing just fine.

“You’re going to have to stand next to her,” Natalie says.
 

I nod and move forward.

Cole’s people tell her I’m right behind her, and in an exaggerated move, she sweeps me into a hug. She smells so good, and I won’t lie. I get a little hard when her breasts press against my chest.

By the way the crowd is going crazy, I realize Liliana must have just arrived. I glance behind me to see her step out of the limo in her little red dress. It’s flouncy, and I had fun when she modeled it for me. She spun around and around, the bell of the skirt rising up to reveal her shaved muff and tight ass.

Someone pulls at my arm and my attention is back to the photographers yelling things at Cole and me. Unlike the paparazzi, these guys are pleasant. We’re pressed together and the shutters go off in a mad wave of light. Then a few of the other actors in the film crowd in, and I’m forced to place my hand on her back as once again her breast presses against the side of my chest.

We all smile and somehow, my hand drops and stops at just the beginning curve of Cole’s ass. It’s familiar and comforting, and for a moment, I forget about the past few months. I imagine that we’re still together, walking this aisle as a Hollywood couple. I turn to Cole with a smile on my face. Mine is real, hers is not.
 

When I look at Cole,
truly
look at her, I see how tired she is; how pale. She is wearing heavier makeup than I’ve ever seen her wear to disguise the dark rings under her eyes. Even with all the makeup, I can see her skin isn’t as soft and glowing as it had been.

My heart starts to thump and I begin to question if something’s really wrong with her. “Cole, are you—”

But she must not hear me over the noise because she turns and starts finishing the red carpet walk.

I finish my walk and speed up once inside. When I catch her, I call out to her again. She turns, but the fake smile is gone. It’s replaced by an expression of nothingness. As I think of how to start, she pulls her MP3 player from her handbag. Slowly, she places the buds in her ears, and without a word or an inkling she even knows me, she turns and walks away.

As Xavier rushes past me to keep up with her, Oscar slows down enough to look me in the eyes. He says nothing, but the sad shake of his head speaks volumes.

I get word from my co-star Macy that Cole didn’t even bother to sit down to watch the film. She snuck out the back door almost as soon as she entered the building. She doesn’t bother to show up to the studio after-party.

The pit of guilt swells, and I’m not sure what to do or how to feel.

As days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months, I realize Liliana’s fun, innocence, and spontaneity can sometimes just be her being inconsiderate, immature, and disregarding of responsibility. She also sometimes says really stupid things to the press and makes it that much harder for us to do what the studio wants.
 

I don’t so much question the choice I made to explore things with her instead of staying with Cole, as I try to shepherd Liliana who can be erratic. Tonight we decide to go to a club with some of the other
Tortured
stars.
 

We’re shooting in New York this time as Lili’s character, Maya, is at college now. So the stakes are a bit higher for us in the Big Apple. We’ve had to do the car switcheroo, just like I’ve done with Cole, and we’ve dealt with being photographed at the most insane times, like when we get coffee, or when I step out onto the balcony for some fresh air and my hair is a mess. That guy was dangling from the balcony above like fucking Spider-man.

So tonight, I went over the plan with Lili. We’d go to the club, but we couldn’t do couple things. We had to keep our hands to ourselves and be elusive.

In her mind that translated into being all over me and grabbing my cock in front of the hundreds of people with a camera cellphones. They shouldn’t have let her in the club anyway. First, Liliana is a few weeks from twenty one and second, she got drunk at the hotel and was obviously wasted when the guy with the muscles and clipboard let us in.