There were three sofas in the confined space—one along each of the three walls. Pepper and I took the sofa on the right, while Hunter took the one opposite us.
“So, tell me about you, Pepper,” he said.
“What kind of things would you like to know about me, Mr. Steele?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe who you really are? The person beneath the polite facade you’ve shown to me today? Because I have to say that based on meeting you today, nothing about you screams ‘terrible teen.’”
He’s baiting her, I worried. But how will she take the bait?
“I was raised to be polite to strangers,” she said with a modest shrug. “And my father schooled me to be professional when it comes to dealing with all things business. But now, after spending half an hour with you, I feel comfortable being myself. I feel that I can trust you, which is nice. So first, I can tell you that I’m an absolute professional when it comes to working with others and protecting my brand. I take my work very seriously. Second, when it comes to my haters on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter? I can tell you that I can become a hard-knocks ghetto bitch when and if I need to be—which happens to be more often than not, because in the real world, this billionairess bitch don’t play when the haters come to have their say.”
“You don’t say . . . ?” he said with a bemused smile.
“You’ve read some of my posts,” she said, challenging him. “You already know how I can be. It’s one of the reasons I’m here.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake, Pepper, don’t get overconfident now!
“Tell me about your parents,” he said. “What was it like growing up with them?”
“I haven’t exactly grown up with them,” she said coolly. “My parents divorced years ago. Sometimes, I feel as if I’m the grown-up in my family.”
That piqued his interest, because he leaned forward on the sofa and looked at her quizzically.
“How so?”
“You’re certain that anything I say to you now is private and not being recorded or filmed?”
“I am. I promise you that, Pepper.”
She took a breath before she literally spilled her guts.
“My mother is a perfectly lovely Park Avenue socialite who also happens to be a hard-core closeted drunk. To the world, she’s this fabulous, beyond-wealthy specimen of good genes and better manners. But that’s only because she was raised well by my grandparents, she married up when it comes to my ridiculously rich father, and because she’s held on to her looks. As for me? Look, I love my mother, but each morning, I’m the one picking her up off the bathroom floor and cleaning her up, which usually means wiping her own vomit off her face, undressing her, then getting her under a cold shower.”
She’s totally going for it, I thought. What will Hunter think of Pepper’s childhood and how it has shaped her into the enterprising young woman she’s become today? Only time will tell, because Pepper’s on a roll and she’s not stopping now . . .
“As for my father,” she said, “he’s a super-successful businessman who, on the sly, also happens to enjoy his fair share of high-end Russian prostitutes. The person you’re looking at now is the product of who my mother and father are now. But please don’t pity me, because I’ve learned plenty from my wayward parents—especially when it comes to the mistakes they’ve made in their lives. When it comes to my mother—who was sidelined by my father when he suddenly decided to divorce her—I’ve learned compassion, even when it wasn’t so easy, because when my mother gets shit-faced drunk, she can be impossible to deal with. But because I love her and feel for her, I long ago decided to just suck it up and deal with the shit my father dealt her. As for my father? You can just consider me daddy’s little girl—but in a modern sense. He shows his love for me not by spending time with me, but by sending me fancy gifts, giving me all the credit cards a girl could want, and also by mailing me plenty of checks that just roll in whenever I happen to pop into his head.” She shrugged at him. “That’s who I am, Mr. Steele. That’s my truth.”
After that unexpected exchange, Hunter looked as taken aback as I felt. Our eyes met, and I just blinked at him in a way that sent the message that I knew nothing about most of this. But the crisp, almost emotionally barren way that Pepper had laid out her life to both of us told us everything we needed to know about her. She hadn’t just opened up to us, but she’d admitted—consciously or not—that there was a great deal of pain in her life. I felt oddly protective of her at that moment, and I sensed that Hunter did as well.
“I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through any of that, Pepper,” he said.
But Pepper wasn’t looking to be coddled.
“So are my millions of followers,” she said breezily. “I don’t know why, but maybe having two screwed-up parents brings out something in me that others can relate to? Who knows what my viewers see in me, but I have a feeling it has to be something like that. I don’t think I’m followed by all these people just because I have a smart mouth and can paint a mean lip. I think they sense that even though I’m seen as this rich, entitled bitch, there is another side to me. I’m not afraid to discuss the issues I’m dealing with when it comes to my parents. Like some of them, I’m the product of divorce—and so I talk about that while I apply a new eyeliner or foundation I’ve recently discovered. I get personal with them while doing my makeup tutorials because what am I supposed to talk about in the meantime? Just about how to apply eye shadow? I mean, how dull would that be? I talk with them about what’s going on in my life. Yes, I spare them some of the sordid details because, frankly, they’re humiliating, but for the most part? I’m completely honest with them.”
“Actually, I think that’s your brilliance,” Hunter said. “Unlike so many others who do makeup tutorials, you talk to your fans as if they’re your best friends. You allow them into your life, sometimes in ways that are so real and difficult to hear, you cut to their core.”
“Look, I’m no hero, I’m just trying to be me, OK?” she said. “Nothing else.” She held out her hands to him. “So, what else would you like to know about me, Mr. Steele? Because after sharing that with you—which I’ve pretty much only shared with my best friend, Amanda, and now with you and Julia—I’m an open book.”
I could tell by her rigid posture alone that opening up her life to us—in the Confessional room, of all places—that sharing her story hadn’t been as easy on her as it had seemed.
So, why had she gone there . . . ?
Was it just a calculated move on her part to get the job? I had to believe it was, because Pepper craved fame more than anything else. Somehow, as young as she was, she knew exactly how to read this business—and how to maneuver within it. Just now, she’d played her hand expertly to take her life to the next level. But in the meantime, she’d also revealed why she wanted this job so badly. And the reasons why she wanted it broke my heart. Her parents were selfish wrecks. Pepper was only trying to stay sane and survive while claiming her spot within a dysfunctional whirlwind. How long had she been the adult in her life? I didn’t even want to think of it. She was only fourteen, for God’s sake. And yet she spoke as if she were years older than she was. Whatever kind of hell she’d experienced since her parents’ divorce had obviously motivated her to work hard and to focus on preparing herself for a day like today.
I had to commend her for it.
“I think I’m good,” Hunter said to Pepper. “Thank you for coming today. It was a pleasure, Pepper.”
“I feel the same, Mr. Steele. Thank you for having me.”
He turned to me. “Julia, the rest of today is going to be hell for me, but I’d like to discuss the possibilities of having Pepper become part of our show before it’s too late to do so. Are you available for dinner tonight? We can discuss details then.”
“I’m available,” I said. “Name the restaurant, and I’ll be there.”
“How about db bistro moderne?”
“I love that
place. But can you get a table there on such late notice?”
“I happen to know the manager, so it won’t be a problem. Does eight o’clock work for you?”
“Eight’s fine. I’ll meet you there.”
“But isn’t eight o’clock too early?” Pepper said in surprise. “I thought you were meeting with ABC about me tonight.”
That was a calculated lie on Pepper’s part, but since she put it out there, I now had no choice but to go with it. Otherwise, she’d be seen as a liar, which would ruin everything we were trying to achieve. “I meet with them at six,” I said, hating that she was forcing me to lie. “I’ll be able to meet with Hunter at eight, even if they do want us to sign a deal with them.”
“You’re meeting with ABC?” Hunter asked.
“That wasn’t supposed to get out . . .” I said, looking annoyed at Pepper as I raced to collect my thoughts. Pepper was going for leverage, knowing that if Hunter feared that others were vying for her, he could lose her if he didn’t act quickly. And while I wished to hell that she hadn’t lied, on a business level, I had to admit that she was being smart—because that’s exactly how you played this industry. In the process, she might have just thrown me a lifeline, because I had to prove to CAA that I could reel in the big bucks for them.
But that doesn’t mean that I have to completely lie . . .
“As you can imagine, now that Pepper wants to increase her following—likely through television—plenty of media outlets are lining up to have meetings with her,” I said. Even if that wasn’t true now, I knew it would be true if today fell through and CAA marketed Pepper to the world. Because of her social media following alone, I knew that if I reached out to other networks about her, they’d clamor to hire her for any one of their shows.
“Are we the first to show interest?” Hunter asked.
“You are,” I said. “But Harper being Harper, she’s steamrollering forward on this, particularly after Pepper signed with us today. You know how she is.”
“I do,” he said uneasily. “Harper is aggressive as hell.”
“When am I going to meet my potential castmates?” Pepper asked. “On the tour of the loft, I thought for sure I’d see them, but I didn’t. I’d like to meet them before we leave today.”
At that, Hunter stood—and as he did, I had the pleasure of coming face-to-face with his bulging crotch again, which was literally a foot away from me. And which kind of made me go weak, because whatever he was packing was something, indeed . . .
“When you arrived, they were with our producers discussing the new season,” he said. “But that meeting has to be over by now. Let me take you to them, and see how you respond to them.”
“I’d love that,” she said.
And off we went, into the darkest of unknowns.
* * *
When Hunter found the girls lounging in the living room, all of them had their heads down over their smartphones and were typing furiously, likely to one of their social media feeds. Or maybe they were just texting with one of their friends. Who knew when it came to this generation?
“Ladies,” Hunter called out to them in that sexy baritone voice. “All of you know that Pepper Winters dropped by to meet with us today. Before she leaves, I’d like you to welcome her. Can you put down your phones and do that, please?”
All of the girls paused for a moment before they glanced up at each other, rolled their eyes toward the ceiling, then started typing again, as if they were sending out bullets of hatred in Morse code.
“That was me directing you,” Hunter said firmly. “This is no time to be rude. Come and say hello to Pepper—now.”
After six heated sighs unfurled into the room like fireballs rolling over a scorched Earth, the girls dropped their phones next to whatever chair or sofa they were sitting on and stood up.
And when they did, my lips parted.
Looking at them, I had to wonder if they’d skipped their childhoods and had just gone straight into adulthood, because given the sophistication of how they wore their hair and makeup, and their cutting-edge style of clothes, it was difficult for me to believe that one had to be between the ages of thirteen and sixteen to star on The Terrible Teens. Like Pepper, most of these girls looked as if they were in their early twenties, particularly since all of them were stacked (real or fake—to be decided) and wearing the kind of high heels you’d find on a runway model.
Or in a red-light district . . .
In formation and with aggression, they clicked over to where we stood and looked at Hunter with their sour, pouty little mouths pressed together in a host of angry puckers. I recognized all of them from the show’s first season, but seeing them in person was kind of frightening. Talk about a beautiful murder of crows. As they stood before us, these girls expressed nothing but disdain for Pepper, as daggers sharpened in their eyes.
Hunter turned toward Pepper, whose hands were now on her hips, her lips lifted in a slight quirk as she narrowed her eyes at the girls. As I stole a sidelong glance at her, I thought that if Pepper had a golden lasso at her side, she could have been Wonder Woman, because in the fierceness of her silence and her stance, her message was clear: Don’t fuck with me, bitches!
“Pepper, let me introduce you to the girls,” Hunter said.
As he made the introductions, I was reminded that there was a Jinx, a Clove, a Livia, an Angelina, a Celina, and finally, the one girl I knew Pepper really had it out for: Lexi Reynolds herself, whose social media following was formidable, yet still twenty million shy of Pepper’s.
Even though I’d only caught a few episodes of last year’s season, I knew that Lexi was the queen bee when it came to this group. She was a tall, raven-haired beauty with a body built for sex, even though in this state she wasn’t legally allowed to have it until she was sixteen.
Looking at her, I could only imagine how threatened she and the other girls felt standing in front of Pepper, because these girls were no fools. They knew that Pepper had been summoned here to be part of the show for a damned good reason, all of which came down to lifting the show’s ratings. And given that Pepper’s social media following was the stuff of legend in this age group, I knew from the hostility in everyone’s eyes that shit was about to go down.
“Hi, Pepper,” Clove said as her gaze roamed over Pepper’s body. “Can I get you a Diet Coke? It looks as if you need one.”
“Clove,” Pepper said to the only African American in the group. “What you can get me is a fainting couch, because seeing you in that Prada skirt is starting to make the room spin for me. You do realize that piece of shit you’re wearing is three seasons old, don’t you? Yes? No? Whatever the case, how tragic. That said, allow me to explain to everyone why you’re wearing it. It’s because with your limited means, you got it for ninety percent off at Century 21, didn’t you?”
“Never heard of the place,” Clove said.
“And Prada has never heard of you, Clove. But me? Last year, I was featured in one of their advertising campaigns.”
“Whatever,” she said.
“Oh, burn,” Pepper said.
“Already setting fires, Pepper?” said a pale, striking-looking girl with dyed red hair that fell down her back in thick, lush waves. “How predictable. And if you’ve come to crash our party, you can just sashay away.”
“Janx, if by crashing your party you mean the slumber party sponsored by Ambien you six tossed on the screen last year, that’s to be revealed.”
“It’s Jinx,” she said with a scowl.
“You know, looking at you now, I have to agree that it is. I mean, that face of yours pretty much confirms that you were jinxed at birth. It’s nothing short of a genetic mishap that should be studied by scientists—if they could even assess it, given the botched plastic surgery you’ve had.”
“I’ve hardly had plastic surgery, Pepper—”
“Then why is your right eye slightly higher than your left eye, Janx? Because it is. All of us in this room know that it is.
So, allow me to be the adult in the room and tell you what these broads won’t.”
“And what’s that, Pepper?” she asked.
“All the contouring in the world can’t conceal your wonky right eye, sweetie. So, why not try wearing your hair over it? And by the way, if you google your before and after nose, as I have for shits and giggles, a knife also has been at that.” Pepper paused for effect. “Not that I can blame you for trying to fix that nightmare of a schnoz, darling, because that blob of a nose you were born with was a nuclear deformity. Good on you for trying your best to fix it, regardless of the results.”
As Hunter and I stood shoulder to shoulder watching a succession of stink bombs explode, my instinct was to protect Pepper and get her out of here, even if she was crushing any and all who dared to come her way.
Angelina and Livia gave it their best shots by attacking Pepper’s drunk of a mother—only to walk away wounded when Pepper asked how Angelina’s father was enjoying prison life after he’d been sentenced to the clink for money laundering on Wall Street, and how Livia’s sobriety was coming after she’d been caught by the police using cocaine. And then came Celina, who truly went into the gutter when it came to Pepper.
“Hi, Salty!” she said as she lifted her straight brown hair off her shoulders and swung it behind her back. “Good to have you here—and when I say that, I mean that it’s as good as getting a diagnosis of chlamydia.”
“You’d know, Celina,” Pepper said with a laugh. “You’re such a slut, your daily vitamin is probably penicillin.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Pepper. I’m as clean as they come.”
“To be decided,” Pepper said. “But if that’s true, it’s only because you recently left your doctor’s office with a year’s worth of antibiotics. Or maybe it’s because this morning you decided to wear out your bidet, though I wouldn’t bet on yours to have enough water pressure to clean out the likes of you.”
Making It (The Making It Series) A Romantic Comedy Page 4
