Glitter on the Web (7 page)

“And you get a one-million-dollar payday,” Eli reminded. “Actresses all over this town would kill for that kind of part.”

“Then maybe you should find one,” I snapped.

“I could,” he agreed. “But you’ve already been playing a part for seven months, tight-lipped with every lie so far, just to get a paltry paycheck.”

“Hey,” Frank objected. Eli just gave him a look, and he conceded the point with a shrug of his shoulders. Eli turned back to me.

“So what’s another twelve? Unless, of course, you’re afraid that you might actually fall in love with me…,” he trailed off, almost like a dare.

I shot up out of that chair like a rocket. “God, you’re so full of yourself! This has nothing to do with you! This has to do with me looking myself in the mirror for the next year.” I groaned as I cupped my face in my hands. “And all your fans, too. Jesus.”

He stood to face me. “My fans are the very reason you should do it.” Off my look, he clarified. “They would never have a chance with me regardless. All they have is a fantasy. People like Rhonda; they blow those things to bits just to watch the world burn.
That’s
what hurts people. No one needs a dream to come true to get something out of it. Sometimes just having the dream is enough. All we’re asking you to do is just give them a reason to hold onto the idea that they can be loved for who they are. You tell me that’s possible, but you act like I’m the only guy who can make that happen for them. Who’s the real liar here, Carly?”

I wanted to throw up in my mouth a little bit. I couldn’t believe he was turning his lies around on me. “I’m not saying you’re the only guy who could pull that off. But you shouldn’t lead people on to believe you are if you’re not. It’s dishonest.”

“And if I were to look at your driver’s license right now, what would it read under weight?” he asked. I looked away. “We all lie in this life for various reasons. You’re just the one being offered a million bucks to do it.” He had me there. “I could pocket that money. Add it to the pile already at the bank. I could take a vacation somewhere exotic, where I could lounge on the beach and fuck every bikinied babe who walked by.
Or
, I could give it to you, someone who clearly needs it, who could do something important with it. And all you have to do is silently go along with everything, which is exactly what you’ve been doing all along.” He smiled wide, that dimpled grin that made other women weak in the knees. My eyes narrowed as he went on, going too far, as usual. “Plus you get a year with me. Where’s the downside?”

Hate, hate, hate.
Stabbity
. I couldn’t listen to anymore. “I gotta go,” I said suddenly. “I can’t deal with this right now. I just need some time to think.”

Eli’s victorious smile widened. “So it’s not a no.”

I glared at him. God, how I wanted to tell him to go straight to hell. But he was right. A check with two commas and six zeroes changed some things. I needed some perspective, and it was clear I wasn’t going to get that in that office.

“Remember, you’re still under our original NDA,” Frank called after me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I dismissed. I grabbed my purse, sneezed twice from all the flowers, and left that office about an hour after I got there—which was uncommon for me.

Even more uncommon for me, I was at FFF when it opened at eleven o’clock that morning. Clem wasn’t there yet. She had started a new job on a new show, so I relayed my story to Antoine, her partner and other bestie.

Antoine Bouche was a true Southern Creole from Louisiana, from his latte-colored skin to his gray-green eyes. He was tall, big and colorful, like a Mardi Gras parade all by himself, with braids and beads and gold and green, like a Culture Club song personified. And NDA be damned, I needed some insight from someone far enough removed from the situation to give me the kick in the ass I needed, to say no to this horrible nightmare once and for all. I knew no one would shoot me as straight as an out and proud gay man.

Clearly I should have waited for Clem.

“Girl, take the money,” Antoine told me. “If it was me, I would have already cashed the check and gone shopping.”

“Thanks,” I deadpanned. “That’s very helpful.”

“I hate to agree with the man, but he has a point. You’ve already lied by omission. You haven’t come clean in all these months just how full of shit he is. Why is now any different?”

I sighed. “Because it was finally over. Rhonda outed him. But the weasel found a way to burrow his way back in, and now he’s taking me with him.”

Antoine shrugged. “So don’t go. Call Rhonda up and throw your support behind her. I know you know her number.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I confessed. Then I thought about that check again. I had been playing the lotto once a week since I turned 18 hoping for that kind of payday. Hell, most of us did. You would have to be a lunatic to turn down that kind of windfall. And there it was, mine for the taking. “It’s not every day someone wants to just hand you seven figures, you what I mean?”

“I know that’s right,” Antoine told me. “That’s some
Indecent Proposal
/movie shit right there, something most of us working girls can only dream about happening. If he ever decides to pretend he’s gay, send him along to me. I’ve got a few uses for that kind of money for sure”

“What do you mean?”

It was his turn to sigh. He glanced around before he leaned in. “They’re turning this whole block into a shopping center as part of the neighborhood renovation project. They’re tearing everything down by spring to revamp it. We have till the end of March to find a new place, and the ones we like are right out of our price range. Anything in Hollywood or West Hollywood is out of the question unless we have a lot more money. That’s why Clem took that new job. We’re hoping for a miracle of our own, otherwise FFF is no more.”

My stomach dropped. “Are you kidding?” He shook his head. I couldn’t imagine a world without FFF. It had become a part of me since I had moved to L.A. And poor Clem and Antoine. This was their dream.

“Why didn’t she tell me about this?” I asked Antoine.

“You know Clem. She’s going to do it on her own. Her grandfather offered to take out another loan on the house, but she won’t let him. We either do it ourselves or we don’t do it at all.” As he looked around the fledgling empire he had built with his friend, I knew suddenly that not doing it at all was very possible.

It made me sad that evening as I stuck around my favorite haunt, working behind the bar just to give me something to do. I needed to be around my people, people who understood my particular struggles. That meant Clem and her special clientele, who thankfully didn’t bother to acknowledge my newfound fame as Eli Blake’s possible girlfriend; though I caught several do a double take as they passed the bar.

That’s what made FFF such an oasis. It was safe haven for all.

And now it was in jeopardy over something as stupid as money.

I didn’t say anything to Clem about what I knew regarding FFF. When I told her about the contract, she just shrugged and said it was up to me, that I had to follow my heart. But when she told me she, too, would have taken it and spent it where it needed to go, Eli Blake be damned, I knew exactly what that meant.

I had to agree it would have been fitting to fund a size-positive nightclub with his money. Letting FFF shut its doors forever would have been exactly what guys like Eli would have wanted. If I turned down that money, I was essentially turning all these people out into the streets, where they had no sanctuary and no place to be welcomed and accepted. This was their dream, their beautiful—attainable—dream, and all that was standing in the way was the good, ol’ fashioned, American dollar. And in Frank’s office, at that very moment, there was a check printed out to me, good, ol’ fashioned, American Carly Reynolds, promising me one million of them.

Eli’s damnable voice kept whispering in my ear, “
Who’s the real liar here, Carly
?”

It really put a damper on my Friday, almost as much as both Antoine and Clem asking me what Eli had asked me. “You’re not afraid of falling for him, are you?”

That suggestion was even more ludicrous than being paid a million dollars to lie. Eli Blake was repugnant, and sure to stay that way so that someone like me wouldn’t fall in love with him. It would only complicate matters for the delicate genius, and God only knew one couldn’t do
that
.

“So where’s the harm?” my friends asked, and as God as my witness, I really didn’t have an answer for them.

“I’d do a whole lot more for a lot less. Just sayin’,” Antoine said, and Clem agreed.

Saturday turned out even worse than Friday. Not only was FFF about to topple thanks to the neighborhood development, but Ling sprang the news on all his tenants in that early Saturday meeting that we, too, were about to get evicted, uprooted and displaced, thanks to the neighborhood renovation. Of all the tenants on the block, Ling had held out the longest, forcing the developers to up their ante until they finally reached a number he couldn’t turn down. He decided it was time to close up shop and retire to China, to get while the getting was good.

Honestly, I couldn’t even blame him.

As of that morning, we had three months to find a new place to live before the whole thing came down. This meant I couldn’t quit my job at Frank’s without having anything to back it up, unless, of course, I wanted to go back to Texas, which I didn’t, or—more to the point—couldn’t..

Of course, if I took the million dollars, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of that stuff. I could get a new place and help out my new friends. I could start over, really and truly start over, like I had always dreamed of doing.

And all I had to do, like everyone kept telling me, was just keep doing what I had already done. I had to keep silent.

One year. One lie. One million dollars.

I knew within that weekend it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

CHAPTER
FOUR

Though we had already made our unofficial debut during his CityWalk concert on January 9
^th
, I held off cashing that check Monday, January 12
^th
. This date officially started the term of my year-long farce of a relationship with Asshole Extraordinaire: Eli Blake. Frank was beside himself. He had just finalized the details for Eli’s performance for one of the bigger awards shows. “Don’t forget to kiss him when he wins,” he smiled at me. “I want that on camera.”

I made a face just thinking about it. “I thought I was only supposed to keep quiet and show up to a few events,” I shot back.

“Potato, potahto,” he shrugged without looking me, which told me all I needed to know about the hidden expectations that went along with my million-dollar payday. It indebted me to Eli Blake in ways I had suspected from the start, like going for lunch on January 13
^th
, where he proposed the inevitable.

“I want you to move in with me,” he said as he sipped the expensive champagne he insisted we order to ‘celebrate.’

“I’m not moving in with you, Eli,” I said as I grabbed a roll to ease the rising bile in my stomach. “This year is going to be distasteful enough without adding a smug, vain asshole of a roommate on top of it.”

“You can’t stay in your apartment,” he shrugged. “It’s getting demolished in March.” My gaze slid to his face. He leaned back. “You really don’t think there’s anything about you I don’t know, do you? I had to protect myself, too.”

“You didn’t even know my name until five days ago.” And I knew damned well he hadn’t gotten any background checks that would have unearthed that information in the short period of time it took him to make his indecent proposal.

“I’m a quick study,” he assured. “After we dropped you off at the restaurant on Thursday, I went online to see if that was where you lived. I found the information that it had been sold, and what the plans were for the neighborhood.”

Of course
. “So that was why you offered me so much money the next day.”

“What do you know?” he grinned. “You’re a quick study, too.”

“Whatever. I’m still not moving in with you.”

He shrugged. “Up to you. But my place is gated and private. No more PING vultures waiting at your front door, hoping to see me coming or going for the next year.”

I rolled my eyes. “They’re going to have to use the panoramic setting just to fit your head in the shot.”

He laughed. “That’s not conceit, baby. Them’s the facts. I’m a somebody, which makes you a somebody by association. Better start living like it or else the whole house of cards comes down.”

“Ah,” I said, the light bulb coming on at last. “Embarrassed by your new girlfriend’s shithole apartment, are you?”

He leaned forward. “I can’t be a romantic hero if I let you stay there, now can I?”

“The millionaire and the ingénue,” I agreed with a nod. “A tale as old as time. Is this where you fit me with a crystal slipper?”

“We’ll get to that,” he promised without elaborating. “I was thinking about Valentine’s Day. We’ll make the whole thing very public. A true love story. Frank already has me booked on Dixie’s show. We’ll announce it there.”

I made a face. “I told you I’m not doing any interviews.”

“No interviews,” he assured. “They’re going to have a surprise proposal and I get to do the song. She’s a big girl, like you,” he added. And I hated him for it.

“There’s more to me than that,” I informed him.

“So move in with me,” he countered. “Let me see. Unless you just want to date,” he offered. “If we date, that means we go everywhere together. That’s how it’s done, you know. Two lovers in love, can’t keep their hands off each other,” he added as he reached for my hand on the table with his pinky finger. I jerked away. “We’ll be in the press constantly and the buzz will never die down. If you move in, we jump up a few steps in Relationship-ville, which means we’ll be old news by Memorial Day. Pretty soon you’ll be forgotten and you can go your own way and do your own thing. The quicker that happens, the easier it will be to just quietly end things later on.”