Vexed (10 page)

I
pretty much
cry the entire way to Los Angeles. Why, I don’t know, since I left of my own free will.

My phone blows up about two hours into my trip. Karina. I shut the phone off and keep driving.

What Google Maps told me was a five-hour and fifty-five minute trip, ends up taking me eight hours. The traffic at this hour is ridiculous. I end up driving around the street ten times before I see the small entrance to the parking space behind my building.

The apartment’s a lot seedier than it looked in the ads.

The neighborhood’s supposed to be decent. The rent’s certainly high enough. It’s close enough to my acting classes that I can walk. The first pang of excitement hits me.

I made it.

I’m here.

You’ve been waiting your whole life for this.

Is Reed upset that I left?

All those little whispered thoughts go through my mind as I stare at the building. My new home.

My excitement gets snuffed out when I enter our building. Our apartment is on the second floor. The door is wide open and people seem to be coming and going. I’m exhausted and just want to sleep, not deal with a bunch of strangers.

“Roxanne?” I ask, poking my head inside.

“Ohmygod!” a short blonde shouts and hurries over. “Athena! You’re finally here. I was about to rent your room out to someone else.”

Since I’m paid up for the month, I hope that’s a joke.

“Everyone, this is my new roomie, Athena. Be nice.” Most of the people she introduces me to are around my age. Under the pounds of makeup caked on her face, I figure Roxanne, or Roxy as she insists I call her, to be around twenty-two or twenty-three.

She shows me to my room, which is miraculously clean and quiet, given the party going on in the living room.

“You gonna crash?” she asks from the doorway.

“Yeah. Sorry. It was a long drive.”

“Okay. I’m about ready to kick some of these fuckers out anyway.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll chat in the morning and I’ll show you around.”

“Sounds good.”

I close the door and I’m relieved to find an extra lock on it. After sliding it into place, I strip and dig out Romeo’s T-shirt to sleep in. It smells like him and today hits me like a bag of nickels to the face. What the fuck did I do? I really like him. Maybe…

I convinced myself I’d see him when I go home for the Fourth, but by then he’ll probably have moved on to one of those girls in his club and forgotten about me. And if I’d given up on my dream for him and then he dumped me later, I’d be furious with myself.

Besides, how was a long-distance relationship between us really going to work? Was he going to ride out here every weekend to see me? Would he insist I come home?

You didn’t even give him a chance to figure it out.

“Shut up,” I mutter to myself like a crazy person.

I pull out a set of clean sheets, and not trusting Roxy’s housekeeping skills, make the bed.

Big day tomorrow.

A
fter a week
of drinking and generally being a dick to everyone in sight, I still can’t stop picturing
her
every time I try to go to sleep. Those steel-blue eyes haunt me every god damn time I close my eyes.

Wolf pounds me on the back on his way into church. “You’re pathetic.”

“Fuck off.”

“You need to get laid,” Whip says.

Is everyone planning to give me shit today?

“Melody brought one of her friends with her,” Cricket suggests. He just got voted in, so no, I’m not real receptive to dating advice from the little punk.

“Worry about your own dick,” I snarl.

“Just tryin’ to help, Prez.”

No shit. Getting someone else underneath me
would
probably help me move on, but I can’t be bothered. My dick must be broken, because he’s not interested either.

Once I’m seated at the head of the table, some of the fog lifts and I finally concentrate on something besides her.

Wolf raises his hand. “We got word that one, Red Storm’s trying to move into Dragon territory. And two, they’re patching in LEOs now.”

A round of what-the-fucks go around the table. If Red Storm’s being infiltrated by law enforcement, that could be bad for all the MCs in the area.

Dante sits forward. “How reliable?”

Wolf puts his hand up and wobbles it back and forth. “Too early to tell.”

“Who gives a fuck then?” Dante asks.

“Hey, just passing along information.”

“This info come from Tucker?”

“Yeah.”

“Is Bolt asking us for help with pushing them out of their territory?” I ask.

“Not yet.”

“Good. Then Dante’s right. Not our problem.” Tucker going into Red Storm territory to gather information still bugs me, though. Yeah, he said it was to help right the wrong done to his daughter, but he’s also a known liar. “Just to be safe. I say we reroute our next shipment through Nevada and have Fang truck it instead of Tucker.”

“Works for me,” Dante agrees. Everyone else gives their yeses.

We go through a list of less-exciting club business. There’s a surprising amount of tedious paperwork involved in running a successful outlaw motorcycle club. Any bunch of assholes can call a building a clubhouse and play outlaw biker. To survive and succeed at it takes some skill, hard work, and cunning. All my brothers have those qualities or they wouldn’t be wearing the Iron Bulls patch. For the first time,
I’m
the one not pulling my weight because I’m fucked up over a chick. It pisses me the fuck off.

When we break, I stay behind to talk to Wolf and go through some papers. Once I’m satisfied I’ve done some actual work, I join my brothers in the common area.

Ignoring the degenerate acts going on around me, I spot Dante and his girl at the bar with Luck. No, I will not go over there and casually ask if she’s heard from Athena. I don’t give a shit.

Against my better judgment, I approach the bar. Karina gives me a look that’s part fear and part pity. I hate that I lost my shit in front of her the other day. Hate that I let her see how much her little friend got under my skin.

Aware that it’s completely unreasonable to blame Karina for my misery, I can’t help the annoyance that creeps over me when she’s near. So I ignore her completely.

Luck passes me a Jack and Coke before I open my mouth. Probably for the best, otherwise something stupid’s about to roll off my tongue. Dante waits until I’m a few rounds in to needle me.

“Prez, you must be, what, ninety percent alcohol by now?” he asks with a smug face I’d love to punch if I didn’t think I’d miss and hit the wooden pillar behind him.

Luck has more respect for his president than Dante does and asks if I want to switch to soda.

“No,” I snap at Luck. Then I turn my pissed-offedness on Dante
. He’s
the one I should really blame. Asshole just had to hook up with some chick with a friend. Never mind if girls didn’t bring their friends by, we’d have the same tired pussy day after day. I’m not in a logical mood or making sense at the moment. “Fuck off,” I spit at Dante, without turning my head.

He laughs. In what’s left of my peripheral vision, I spot Karina shaking her head at him. Christ, I don’t need a girl trying to stick up for me.

That’s the last straw. I stay here much longer, I’m bound to throw a punch or say something mean to Karina and I’m in no condition to defend myself from Dante’s sledge-hammer sized fists.

Even worse, the longer I’m around Karina, I’m afraid I’ll cave and ask if she’s heard from Athena.

No. Not happening.

Leaning over the bar, I snag an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels, and let my middle finger fly at everyone in the room.

Drunk and alone, I take my sorry ass upstairs.

Stupid little girl.

I’ve been called that more than once during my first week in Los Angeles.

It wouldn’t be so annoying if it wasn’t true.

Every day it becomes more and more clear how pathetically underprepared I am. Hollywood isn’t glamorous. It’s hard work, dead ends, and mean people. The whole myth about being “discovered” is just a myth, I’m finding out. It’s hard to be discovered in a place where every town in America seems to have sent their two most beautiful people.

I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t return Karina’s dozens of calls. Surprisingly, she hasn’t mentioned Romeo at all. She does let me vent for a long time, though.

“Tall, pretty blondes are everywhere. I’m one of thousands. Not only that, but most of them have been auditioning for commercials, or enrolled in theater schools since they were kids. They’ve got experience working on sets in small roles that I never even knew existed. They’ve worked for nothing in projects like student films, experimental plays, short films, showcases... I don’t even know where to look to find the non-paying roles, let alone the paying ones.”

I stop and take a breath, and her laughter comes over the line. “You’re so brave.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“Well, that too.”

Before I chicken out, I blurt out the question I’ve been dying to ask. “How’s Romeo?”

She’s silent for a minute. “He…he wasn’t happy.”

“Really? But it was just a fling. He must have girls in and out of his bed all the time.”

Even over the line, I sense her irritation. “Yes, but he really seemed to like
you
. I haven’t known him that long, but he seemed different with you. Now he’s back to being a nasty jerk.

“Sorry.”

She’s not done making me feel like shit though. “You were the first girl I saw him with more than once.”

“Ew.”

“Shut up. You know what I mean. I’ve never seen him get upset over a girl leaving either.”

He was upset? “Should I call him?”

“Maybe. You should’ve talked to him before you left. I think leaving a
note
pissed him off the most.”

Shame washes over me. That was a shitty, cowardly thing to do. “He showed it to you?”

“Yes.
Thank you
? Really?”

“Well, you know my parents always insisted I write a thank you note.”

She chuckles. “Yes, princess, but I don’t think a thanks-for-taking-my-virginity-note was what they had in mind.”

See, I
am
a stupid little girl. “I didn’t know what to do,” I admit miserably.

“Obviously. Are you still coming home for the Fourth?”

“Maybe.”

She sighs. We talk a little longer and then hang up.

I didn’t want to tell her the reason I hesitated about coming home is because gas is crazy-expensive. Wait. Make that,
everything
is expensive. Luxuries like road trips home might have to be put on hold. After only a few days out here, I realized if I didn’t find a job I’d run through my cushion of money fast.

Guess what? The thousands of other wannabe actors stuffed into this city already have jobs. No one wants to hire an eighteen-year-old girl with no experience. At least I have my high school diploma, one person told me. It put me in the top fifty percent of the pile.

Yay, me.

It’s embarrassing how big of a mistake I made.

I keep telling myself I’m on the right track. I’ve readjusted my expectations—more than once. I’m enrolled in a class with a great acting coach. Although, on the first day he told us “You can never control the opportunities, but you can control the readiness.”
Those words hit my stomach like a mule’s hoof.

I’m not ready for any of this.

I really am the stupid little girl everyone keeps saying I am.

“Honey, L.A. is a cruel bitch. She will spit you out and send you back to whence you came if you do
not
come to her one hundred percent committed,” my new friend, Elliot, says with a lot of head shaking and finger wagging, when I explain my plans to him after our How to Audition class. He’s the first person, besides Roxy and my acting coach, who hasn’t either ignored me or insulted me.

“I thought I
was
committed.”

“They all think that.”

“Thanks.”

He asks if I want to go out and insists I should be dating too. But my heart isn’t in it.

“Is it a guy? Tell me it’s about a guy.”

“Sort of. I started something before I came out here and just up and left.” Good God, it sounds even worse when I say it out loud.

“I want to hear everything.”

I don’t have a chance because as we walk into my apartment, it’s clear it’s one of
those
nights. Roxy’s entertaining a number of her rough-looking friends again. Some of them wear vests with patches, similar to Romeo’s, so it makes me miss him even more. These guys are nothing like Romeo and Dante, though. While yes, Romeo’s pretty crude, I never felt unsafe around him. Quite the opposite.

These guys, though? They’re more like boys pretending to be hardened men, instead of actual men.

Elliot hesitates inside the door.

“Who’s the queer, Athena?” the least charming of the bunch, Snake, calls out.

The guys catcall and make a bunch of nasty comments, and my cheeks burn with shame. I don’t want Elliot to think these are the kind of people I associate with.

“Uh, these are my roommate’s friends,” I tell him, too embarrassed to look him in the eye.

He seems to acknowledge that with a single nod. “I’m gonna go, honey. I don’t care for the way Miss Congeniality over there keeps staring at me,” he says, indicating Snake.

“I’ll go with you.”

When we’re outside, I offer a lame apology, but Elliot stops me.

“Are you sure you’re safe there? It looks like one big STD petri dish going on.”

I snort at the joke because I’ve had similar thoughts. No judgment, but Roxy gets around. Good for her and all, but the guys are sleazy and treat her like crap, so I don’t understand the appeal.

“Yeah, none of them bother me.”

“Well, if it ever gets bad, don’t hesitate to come over. I’ve got a couch and you’re welcomed to it anytime.”

“Thanks.” My eyes well up and Elliot shakes his head. “Save that for the camera, honey.”

“Oh, shit. We’re supposed to be at rehearsal.”

Elliot had gotten me my first “role.” Had I not listened carefully the first day of class, I would have laughed when his friend offered me the part. It pays nothing and the rehearsal time has been significant, considering how little I’m on stage.

It’s fun, though. And I’m getting experience and hopefully someone will see me in it and maybe offer me a bigger non-paying role.

One can only hope, right?