Hollywood Dirt by Alessandra Torre
Our view on the bed afforded a door’s width glimpse into the living room of the trailer. Enough of a glimpse that, when the front door was kicked in, we saw the edge of it swing, the man stomping up the steps appearing in our doorway a second later. I gripped the sheet to my chest and tried to place the man… Cole’s attorney. DeRico or something like that. Here. With Cole’s trailer door now lying on its side, cockeyed on the floor.
“Shit,” Cole grumbled and pulled the sheet higher on me, his legs swinging off the bed, and he grabbed a pillow, covering himself as he glowered at the man. “What the fuck, DeLuca. Your phone doesn’t work?”
“Don’t bitch at me about communication. Not when you two go and play that stunt on national television without calling me first. Nadia is pissed. Beyond pissed. I had to listen to that bitch personally; she left me an eight-minute voicemail explaining her detailed plans for your castration.”
Cole shrugged. “Want to give Summer some respect and get the fuck out of this room?”
The man glanced at me, then nodded. “I’m sorry.” He made eye contact with the apology, and I shrugged my forgiveness. He turned his back to me and hovered at the door, looking to Cole.
“I’m coming,” Cole barked. “Give me a minute.”
DeLuca closed the bedroom’s door, and Cole was on the bed and above me in a second. “Sorry babe.” He kissed my neck and hopped off the bed, grabbing a pair of jeans off the floor and pulling them on.
“Will everything be okay? With Nadia?” We had conveniently forgotten her in this whirlwind of change, Cole solidly on the Obsessed with Me bus, oblivious to any of the side effects that seemed to plague Don and Casey’s view of our new union.
He shrugged into a shirt. “We already came to an agreement. We’re good. She’s just pissed. It’s normal.” He squeezed my foot, the closest thing to him, and winked at me. “I’ll be back.”
CHAPTER 108
The chair, a leather straight back that sat by the door, was in serious danger of joining Cole’s door on its trip to the set dumpster. DeLuca leaned on the back of it with both hands, his knuckles white, his face dark.
Cole sat down on the couch, his hand waving at DeLuca to proceed. “Okay, give it to me.”
“Nadia is contesting the mediation document, saying that your good faith actions in the mediation were false, and that you were in love with Summer the entire time.”
Cole tilted his head, trying to connect the dots. “But… she’s in love with the director prick. Has been the whole time. Why the fuck does it matter who I’ve been doing what with?”
DeLuca let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Because you knew she was doing the director prick. It was a shared understanding. See, from Nadia’s side, she was under the impression, when agreeing to our terms, that there was a chance that you two could rekindle things.”
“What the fuck?” he exploded. “She was the one who filed for divorce. And rekindle things?” He laughed and felt almost delirious, this a situation happening to someone else. “Getting back with Nadia hasn’t been part of the equation since before I even left LA.” He looked to the bedroom door and wanted Summer out there. Hated her shut away like she wasn’t part of this. He looked back at DeLuca, exasperated. “You’re the one who told me, if I loved Summer, that it was okay.”
“Is that what this is? It wasn’t that damn long ago that I asked you and you didn’t know.”
“I love her.” Cole nodded tightly and met the attorney’s eyes. “Without a doubt.”
“Right now, you have two options. Stay with Summer and split The Fortune Bottle with Nadia, or push this fling aside, we’ll repair things with Nadia and the press, and the movie will be yours. All yours.”
There wasn’t a moment of hesitation in Cole’s response. “Fuck no. Give her half if that’s what it will take.”
“You sure about that?” DeLuca let go of the chair and stepped closer, his head tilting as he examined Cole’s face. “You’re willing to walk away from half of this? Over her?” He nodded toward the closed bedroom door.
“You told me once that you had your soulmate. Would you have given half of a movie away for a lifetime with her?”
Brad’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not permanently walking away from her in my scenario. All I’m asking is for you to put this relationship on hold. Give it six months, then you can reunite, try it again.”
“Would you risk your relationship with your wife?” Cole repeated, and it wasn’t a question at all. It was a point, and Brad stared at him for a long moment before nodding in understanding.
“She must be special,” he said quietly.
“She is.” Cole grinned. “Now get the fuck out of here so that I can get back to her.”
“No second thoughts?” DeLuca said. “It’s half of your baby.”
“No.” Cole shook his head. “It’s a movie. That’s it.” A statement he would never have made a few months ago. Back when his entire life was The Fortune Bottle, and he was ready to tear apart his soul if it meant keeping it from Nadia. But now, with just a flicker of risk to his new relationship, it had lost all of its value. He wanted to be done with Nadia, done with the press, done with everything but the feisty blonde behind that bedroom door. Maybe it’d been the months in this town, a place where pretense and competition didn’t exist. Maybe it was the way that, through Summer, he had taken the first hard look at himself and wanted to change.
“Wow.” DeLuca clapped him on the back, walking past the broken door and out, the summer heat pushing through the opening.
“Anything you need from me?” Cole called.
“Oh, no. Please.” DeLuca waved his hand. “Less is more, Cole. Less is more.” He moved into the crowd, and Cole stood in the doorway and caught Justin’s eye.
“We’re on it,” Justin called, and Cole saw two engineers jogging over, tool bags in hand. Cole waved his thanks, nodded to the men, and stepped back, into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her pantyhose back on, her hands busy on the clasps of her shoes. “Everything okay?”
He leaned against the wall. “My door might disagree, but everything’s great otherwise.”
She stood and zipped up the back of her skirt. “You sure? I want to know if I’m causing problems.”
He stepped forward and looked down at her. “I love telling you when you’re causing problems. But no, right now, sadly, you are behaving entirely too much.”
She grinned. “I’ll brainstorm tonight over ways to cause you more grief.”
“I’d appreciate that immensely.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are in love, we get it,” Justin called loudly from the living room. “Are you dressed? Because I need to get Mr. Loverboy over to Don.”
“That’s you,” she whispered, her eyes mischievous, and his fingers itched to push her onto the bed, just for a moment, just long enough to make those hazel eyes roll back in pleasure.
Justin coughed from the living room, and she pushed Cole to the door. “He’s coming,” she called out, and he frowned down at her. “I’ll see you on set,” she promised and shut the door, his door, on his face.
Cole turned with a scowl, and Justin laughed. “Give Don ten minutes. Then you can come back to her.”
CHAPTER 109
The movie wrapped on a Tuesday. It felt weird, the short week. Like the last days of school where you just watched movies and signed yearbooks, we all kind of milled around like lost children, Don barking at everyone constantly, the few scenes filmed were short redos that he hadn’t been in love with the first time.
It was so much easier to film with Cole after that night. I didn’t realize how much I’d been pushing him off, how much I’d fought my heart. When I stopped that fight, the surge of affection was scary, the feeling heady, the risk exhilarating. Now I knew why they said you fell in love. I plummeted with no parachute, and hoped like hell he would catch me when I hit the bottom. Only, there hadn’t been a bottom. Ther
A week earlier, we camped out on the edge of the Holdens’ plantation, down by the lake. Ate s’mores and drank wine, and he told me about his mom, and how much he loved mine. And then we talked about Life After the Movie and what would happen to her. Cole wanted to bring her to California. I told him that Mama would make up her own mind about where she wanted to be. I’d never been to California, but I couldn’t see her there. Not with everything Cole had described it to be. I wasn’t even sure I saw myself there.
He was the first person I ever told about my Departure From Quincy. I think it hurt him a little. Not in a feelings sense, but more like the idea physically pained him. I had spent a lot of nights thinking, in my bed at night, staring up at my ceiling. My Departure From Quincy plans had been quite glamorous. I’d give Mama a budget and let her pick her poison—there were new homes going up on the edge of town, and eighty thousand dollars would get her a brick three-bedroom, two-bath with everything she never had. Or, if she’d rather, she could take that money and find something else. Maybe an older house on some land, farther out, on one of our hundreds of dirt roads. And I’d trade in the truck and get an SUV, something with air conditioning and low mileage. And then I was going to go someplace cooler. Maybe North Carolina. Find a town big enough to disappear in. Buy a house, find a job, maybe go to college.
That’d been the gist of it all, my fantasies lining up into place in the dark of my room. Before Cole. I told him the plan and watched his throat as he swallowed. He turned his head away, and the moon lit the line of his profile. We had joked about marriage, in front of the reporters. Had been connected at the hip since that night at his house. But we hadn’t discussed the future. He’d tried, I’d evaded, and then, beside that fire, overlooking the lake, I stopped. I stopped running and turned and faced our future.
“What do you want? For us?” I asked the question and he turned, pulling me onto his lap so we faced each other.
“It’s not about what I want. I want you to be happy. So I need to know what you want.”
“I think I want to go back with you. To California.”
“It’s not a city you can get lost in, Summer. Not tied to me.” His voice was guarded, tinged in worry.
“That’s okay. I’m a big girl. I can tough it out.” I had smiled up at him and saw the turn in his eyes, knew—before he’d even reached for me—what was coming. When Cole Masten loves, it is scary. The man puts his entire heart out with the expectation that it will be crushed. Sometimes I worry at the way he looks at me, at the way I feel for him. It seems too precious, too rare—our combination of souls. If I ever lose this man, I will never recover. If he ever loses me, I fear for the man that he will become.
I could take on California for him. I knew that already, but decided it there, by that fire, his push of me back onto the blanket, his hands frantic as they pulled at my clothes.
Together, we could take on anything.
CHAPTER 110
The aftermath of the magazine article was big. Bigger than I ever expected, bigger than even Casey and Cole had expected. Bigger… but different. The public, the big scary monster that I had been told to expect… loved me. Embraced my act of rebellion with a protective fury that scared the news outlets into submission. I avoided interviews, declined requests for comment, and with each retreat from the spotlight, my lore grew. Fan pages popped up in my name. A jilted ex in Chicago pulled a Summer Jenkins of her own at a bachelorette party. The hype also helped The Fortune Bottle, award nominations rumored before the premiere, the foreign distribution deals pouring in. I was happy for the movie but didn’t want the fame, the attention claustrophobic in its unending continuity. The fame I may not have wanted but I loved the support. I didn’t realize how much I needed it, didn’t realize how the positive feedback, the love of strangers, would be inhaled by my greedy soul. The circus of support washed away the three years of scorn, the hundreds of dirty looks, upturned noses, and whispers. It made me feel, for the first time since that night, that I wasn’t in the wrong. They were. That I wasn’t the one broken but that they were.
I hadn’t gone back to Quincy since the movie wrapped. I packed up my things that last week of filming, Mama and I staying up late, my belongings scant when put into cardboard boxes and weeded through. I threw out a lot. The purge was good for me.
And when I boarded Cole’s jet for California, I felt like a new woman. One with a future. One whose past had made me stronger, better.
CHAPTER 111
The last time Cole saw Nadia, he was in his old attorney’s office. He sat in the conference room’s crocodile chairs, feet stretched out on the slate floor, and stared at a Harvard diploma with the prick’s name in gold ink. DeLuca hadn’t wanted him here. He’d wanted this to be done on neutral ground, but Cole wanted this last visit. Plus, with the bloodbath that they were wading through, it was a little victory that Cole felt they needed.
DeLuca’s giant ultimatum turned out to be bullshit, a test of sorts. He was telling the truth about Nadia contesting the mediation agreements. He wasn’t telling the truth about rolling over to them. Cole should have known better. This man had probably tied down his wife and forced the wedding ring on her hand. He certainly ripped the neck out of Nadia’s response, and the paperwork got put in line and filed per their original mediation agreement.
But Cole was still only getting half of The Fortune Bottle. No one knew that except for Justin, DeLuca, and Cole. He was going to give the other half to Summer. Without her, the movie would have been flat. Without her, he’d have flayed around Quincy mourning the end of his life and probably drinking himself into rehab. Without her… he just couldn’t imagine life without her anymore.
He wasn’t gonna tell Summer about the movie just yet. He knew her, and the conversation wasn’t going to go well. She wouldn’t be a normal girl and go misty-eyed and cheer at the thought of eternal wealth. Her brow would tighten, her hands would clench, and Cole had full confidence that there would be a fight over the gift. But he looked forward to that fight, loved when they fought. And when the fight ended, his hands in her hair, her eyes wild, her body crawling up his, her lips… God. He’d never get his fill of kissing her.
He’d tell her after Sundance. When she was high on all of the critics’ praise and was in a good mood. Maybe the carnage would be less then. The movie was wrapped, sealed in tins with the code name Hey Harry printed on them. It was the best work Cole had ever done. It was the best work Don had ever done. And, according to Summer, it was the only work she would ever do. With another woman, Cole would doubt that statement. But not her. She didn’t want the attention, was convinced she didn’t need the money, and had turned her full focus on nesting. Today, they were going to see an estate in Brentwood. It had eight and a half acres so she wasn’t allowed to bitch about being crowded. The realtor promised Summer that, despite its twelve thousand square foot size, that it was ‘cozy,’ so it would be his head on the chopping block if it weren’t.
Something bumped against Cole’s elbow, and he looked up, past the death glare from Nadia and to the source of the tap: Brad DeLuca. “Sign where it’s flagged.” He pushed a stack of papers toward Cole, who signed as quickly as possible without appearing rushed, each turned page one less tie between he and Nadia. And at the end, his last signature slow and purposeful, Cole Masten was officially divorced.
CHAPTER 112
I have officially become a homeowner. Well… not just me. A big lug of man meat named Cole Masten… oh, you’ve heard of him? Yeah, I think he did a Doublemint gum ad or something. Anyway, Cole Masten and I now own a four-bedroom home over in Newberry.
Oh, right. We’re getting married. That’s another secret. Not the engagement—that was plastered on every news channel in town before Cole even got off his knee. But the wedding date and location is still a secret. It’s in six weeks, at the ranch in Montana. I swear, Heaven is hidden at that ranch. I understand why Cole bought it. It’s perfection, wrapped in dewy sunrises and the huff of horses and the smell of wildflowers. Heaven. Until winter strikes, then it’s brutal. Miserable, freezing… I kissed goodbye to any thoughts of living there full-time that first December visit. Turns out that I become a bit of a tenderfoot when temperatures drop below freezing. But it doesn’t seem to bother Mama. She claimed one of the cabins and settled in, happy as could be. She wanted a job so Cole put her in charge of the grounds. She rides a four-wheeler around and makes sure that the plantings are as they should be, and spends the warmer months on her knees, in the dirt, planting. I think—now I may be wrong—but I think that she and Robert, one of the workers there, have a flirtation kicking. Mama and flirtation. Two things I never thought I’d see in the same sentence. Cole and I are laying bets on their behavior at the wedding. I’ll win of course. Nobody knows that woman better than me.