STROKED (The Stroked Series Book 1)
STROKED
Meghan Quinn
Published by Hot-Lanta Publishing
Copyright 2016
Cover design by Indie Solutions by Murphy Rae
Formatting by CP Smith
Cover model: Stuart Reardon
Photo credit: Paul Reitz with Love N. Books
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at
[email protected]
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.
Copyright © 2016 Meghan Quinn
All rights reserved.
**PAISLEY**
“What kind of fresh hell is this?” Finely manicured fingers snap in the air. “Hey, latte mule. Why don’t you haul your marshmallow hooves over here and try delivering me something that didn’t just seep like sewage from the barista’s asshole. And for the love of God, deliver it to me without panting like an out-of-work hippo.” Mocha-colored latte drops to the ground, rudely decorating everyone’s shoes and discoloring the laminate floor of the studio. “Why is it so hard to find competent people in this industry?”
Bellini Chambers.
Daughter of Buddy Chambers, millionaire, well known for getting humped by a pig on television and then suing the production company for “soiling” his reputation. Mind you, he didn’t have much of a reputation to soil to begin with. With the settlement, Buddy invested his money into a line of pizza stores – his business sense is on point, despite being humped by a pig on national television.
These weren’t just any kind of pizza stores. Ever hear of Peyton Manning buying a bunch of Papa John’s pizza shops right before pot was legalized in the state of Colorado? Well, you can say Buddy pulled a Peyton Manning.
Pothead Pizza and dispensary.
Buddy invested all his settlement money into the idea of providing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-type pizza toppings to all stoned potheads in Colorado. What kind of toppings are those? Think of the weirdest combination of food, got it in your head? Now times that by fifty and you have their specials.
Thin Mint and Italian Sausage Pizza
Bugle, Pretzel, and Skittles Pizza
Pumpkin Seeds and Chocolate Covered Kale Chips Pizza – that’s for the healthier potheads.
Oreo, Broccoli, and Doughnut Hole Pizza – that one makes me gag.
Attach a coupon for fifteen percent off a pizza when you purchase from the dispensary and stoned consumers with the munchies, willing to put anything in their THC-filled faces, and you have a million-dollar business.
Buddy now sits in his mansion in Malibu, sipping his PBR because he’s still the same pig-humped man, and rolls around in what I can only imagine is a velour jumpsuit two sizes too small for this rotund stature.
Bellini—his one and only daughter—became famous after the general population found their family to be interesting to watch. Three seasons later, Bellini is the star of the show, waltzing around in her Prada heels, Chanel sunglasses, and carrying her miniature schnauzer around in a purse designed by Hermes, of course.
People love to hate her. Americans tune in to her show every Thursday night just to see what kind of asinine, ignorant, and abhorrent filth will come out of her mouth. I’ve been guilty of partaking in such reality TV corruption.
“Carpenter? Where is the carpenter?” she shouts, looking around the room.
A nervous man walks up to her, his tuchas tucked under and his legs quivering in fear. “Um, Miss Chambers. I’m the set designer not a carpenter.”
“Whatever, Bob Vila.” She rolls her eyes. “What kind of wood did you use to make that bench? Is it oak?”
“The b-bench is a prop, ma’am. We didn’t make it. The studio provided it for the photoshoot today.” The poor set designer is sweating bullets, stumbling over his well-thought-out words.
“I specifically asked for a bench made out of African blackwood.” She points at the bench that would be well received in any park around the country. “Does that look like African blackwood?”
“I . . . I don’t know what African blackwood is, ma’am.”
Bellini sneers as she slowly, very, very slowly, scans the poor set designer up and down. “What kind of carpenter are you if you can’t tell the difference between an oak bench and one that is made from African blackwood? Did you go to a trade school made for squirrely little men who have atrocious social skills and smell like cheese? Was your major in fermenting your own Gouda under your armpits? Because I’ll tell you right now, the pungent dairy smell drifting from your sasquatch underarms is offensive to everyone around us.” She pauses and blows on her nails that were just freshly painted. “Now, if you’re not going to get me the African blackwood bench like I asked, then for the love of all artesian markets selling Gruyère, go serve up some crackers with those underarms of yours and get out of my face.”
She’s the devil incarnate.
I turn to Jonathan and shake my head. “I can’t do this.”
He sighs, puts his clipboard on a table next to us, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Paisley, you know I love you, right?” I nod my head. “Good, because you don’t have a choice, this is it.”
I lean closer and hiss at him. “You have got to be kidding me. This was the only job you could find me?”
“There were plenty of jobs, sweetheart—”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
“Because this was the only one that would actually bring you on board.”
“What?” I shout-whisper. “The only job in this entire industry you could find for me was an assistant to a reality star? How is that even possible? I have three years of production experience, specifically in sound mixing.”
“Yes, and those three years were washed away the minute the incident happened.”
The Incident.
There is always a pivotal turn in everyone’s life that tilts the axis of their world, sending them in a different direction. For some, this moment could be getting a raise, having a baby, finding the love of their life. For others, like myself, the moment could be a death spiral, flying out of control into an abyss of solitude where you have one hell of a time trying to claw your way out.
I made one mistake, and it caused the demise of my career, washed away three years of hard work making a name for myself in this industry—two and a half of those being a long-earned internship. Now, not only do I have to start from the ground up, but I have to work around a tarnished image as well.
You’re probably wondering what I did that was so bad I have to take a job as the assistant to the most over-the-top, self-centered human.
It’s simple. I forgot to turn off a microphone.
Yup, you heard that right. I didn’t click one single button. Just one.
Let me enlighten you about this business.
I was working for Good Morning, Malibu at the time, a local morning news station that goes into great detail about the surf report, celebrity parties in the hills, and what tanning lotion is best used for overcast days. Real riveting news, Pulitzer Prize type of stuff.
I was in charge of keeping track of Malibu’s very own Minnie Winston’s microphone. She’s a Botox-injected, leather-skinned, seventy-year-old phenomenon. Her bones screamed seventy, but her face was that of a thirty-year-old. In my opinion, from the way her face didn’t move when she laughed hysterically, she looked like she belonged in a horror flick shining a light on discarded and mutilated Barbie dolls. It was terrifying. Like,
she spins her head around on her neck
kind of terrifying.
But, weirdly enough, she is a Malibu staple, but she is also a loose cannon.
The Incident
happened on a Friday morning. Minnie was in a rare mood that day, pretty sure she didn’t take her Xanax. I was anxious not because of the show, but because my grandpa kept texting me about a Pez dispenser I was bidding on eBay for him. He didn’t know how to work a computer, but texting apparently was right up his alley.
Before I go any further, quick side note: my grandpa means the world to me. I would literally do anything he asked of me. Growing up with the man sleeping in the bedroom next to me, we became best friends, inseparable at times. Other kids on the reservation would bike with their comrades, licking at their ice cream while directing teasing jokes at me. But it hadn’t mattered because my grandpa and I rode like pimps in our souped-up boxcar, taking down a sixty-four-ounce Slurpee with ease while listening to my battery-operated boom box, blasting none other than Queen.
Back to
The Incident
.
During production, we cut to the weather report just as I received a text from my grandpa asking about the soft-head Mickey Mouse Pez he needed so desperately to add to his ever-growing collection. I glanced at my phone for one second, without turning Minnie’s microphone off. You can see where this is going. She started swearing to her makeup artist about a visible wrinkle by her right eye.
While the poor weatherman was talking about the sunny weather and urging viewers to drink plenty of water in the heat, Minnie was raging about the application of wrinkle cream by using adjectives, nouns, and verbs like fucking, shit, and whore face.
Only one sentence was heard before I turned off her mic, but that was all it took. I was packing my box that afternoon and kissing my career goodbye. Word spread, of course, because the clip went viral, thank you, YouTube and Facebook. Social media was the nail in my career coffin and sent me packing with zero prospects lined up.
In case you were wondering, my grandpa did outbid PleazPassThePez65 in an epic bidding war over Mickey Mouse, so at least someone won that day.
I would like to tell you that during the time of my unemployment I spent time reflecting on my inner self, trying to improve my worth by taking other classes, continuing to educate myself, but
that
didn’t happen. Instead, I spent hours upon hours binge-watching Netflix while eating my weight in Thin Oreos—thin because I convinced myself they weren’t that bad for my figure.
It wasn’t until Jonathan, my best friend and roommate, came home one night with a girl while I was lying spread eagle on the couch, itching my inner thigh, and enjoying a can of tomato juice did he kick me in the ass and threaten eviction from the apartment we shared. (Technically I knew he wouldn’t throw me out, but I got his point.)
Wanting to get back in the game, I started my running routine again, which was much harder than I remembered—thank you, Oreos—and searched for jobs everywhere. Six months later, I have one option.
“What is the color of those walls?” Bellini shouts to whoever is in earshot. “Is that ceramic sand? I asked for mystical peach. Is this that carpenter’s fault? Doesn’t anyone know Pantone colors around here? The orange hues are too harsh; they will wash me out.” She starts to fan her face. “I can’t do this, someone get my dad.”
In an instant, the crew scatters away from her and starts searching for Buddy Chambers.
Jonathan grabs my hand and squeezes it sympathetically. “You know I would do anything for you, sweetheart. I would stick my neck out for you, and I did. This was the best I could find. It’s this or start spreading your legs over at Sunset Boulevard. And even though I know this isn’t the job you were looking for, the rent is not going to pay itself. I’ve covered you as much as I can.”