by Lia London
Jill stared dully through the windshield at her motorcycle. “Yeah. We won’t be gone too long.”
“Um. I’m not filming here, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” Something was eating her, all right. Maybe she’d tell him over tacos.
***
Or not.
Jill narrowed her eyes over her chalupa. “What’s eating you, Milo?”
Milo had just bitten into a seven-layer burrito. “Mph-mm.”
“Don’t tell me ‘nothing’, Milo. I’ve known you too long.”
He held up a finger while he chewed enough to swallow, then took a gulp of soda to clear his palate. “What makes you think there’s something wrong? You’re the one who came back to the car all moody.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Moody?”
“Okay, quiet. That’s not your norm, so I figured something’s bugging you.”
“You saying I talk too much?”
“I’m not saying anything, Jill. I’m eating a burrito.” He took another bite to illustrate.
“Fine.” She looked away, dropping her food on the wrapper uneaten.
“Are we having a fight?”
“Are we?” Her tone tied his tongue up in knots.
“I … I don’t know what it’s about, if we are. Shouldn’t I know that before we start a fight?” He lightened his tone. “You know, so I can get all my arguments and zingers lined up? I’m new at this.”
Jill grunted and pinched the bridge of her nose the way she did to stop tears from coming when her parents said something particularly insensitive.
Milo put his burrito down, all appetite lost. What had he said or done to make her cry? He reached over and rested his hand on her arm. “Jill, what’s going on?”
Wiping a lone tear from her cheek, she sighed. “I’m sorry, Milo. It’s been a really weird day. Weird week.”
“Weird summer.”
“What the heck have I gotten us into?” She shifted her hand and started fussing with her pony tail, so Milo leaned back and poked at the condensation on his cup.
“Adventure. It’s what you do.”
“But what are we doing?”
Milo shook the cup to check the ice status. “At last count, trying to win a reality show.”
“And what if that’s not the right thing to do?”
Milo pried the lid off his cup and grabbed a mouthful of ice. “Jill, you’re going to have to get me up to speed. You’re on your Harley, six semi-trucks ahead of me.”
Jill leaned her elbows on the table, sagging into the orange and purple vinyl padding. “Slick wants me to win the regional.”
Milo sat up straighter. “How do you know that?”
“Didn’t you see him? He showed up at the park, making a big show of ‘bumping into me’.” She reached for her purse, swearing lightly. “I’m probably all over the internet again. Soaking wet mess gets endorsed by a mega star.”
Intrigued, Milo grabbed out his phone and tapped in some key words. “Oh hey, look.” He turned the screen to her. “You’re trending. Slick Patton in Portland park with reality show starlet.” He checked the phone again. “25,262 hits.”
“Geez, it’s only been an hour!” She snatched the phone from him.
“Star power.”
“Crap crap crappity crap.”
“You going to tell me why this is bad?”
Jill watched one of the vids on her own phone. “These were all people in the park.” She slammed the phone down. “Whose dumb idea was it to put video cameras in smartphones, anyway?”
Milo picked up the phone and wiped the grated cheese from the screen. “Ugh. I hate to do this to you, Jill, but I’ve got to go to my shoot. If we’re dropping you off at your bike …”
“Yeah, yeah. We can go.” She wadded up the contents of her tray in a napkin. “The ride home will give me time to think.”
“So … you’re not going to hang out for my shoot?”
She looked at him with watery eyes, and his stomach buckled.
“All right. You go home, but drive safe, Jill. I don’t want you on the news for anything but soap opera reality show stuff.”
“Don’t drive mad, Jill.”
“I’ll be okay. Good luck with our Geeky Scientist Who Wants to Play Smart Villain idea.” She gave a half smile. “You’ll have to dig deep. No one could really believe you’re a bad guy.”
As he drove off, Jill sat on her bike with her helmet on the seat in front of her. She figured she should check her messages before riding home. Four spams and a note from Mabel. Hi Jill. Mendel and I are so sorry we spilled the beans. We had no idea news would spread so fast. My friend just called me and said you are all over the internet. So are the other contestants. I’m not sure how to look all that up, but maybe you and Milo should check. So sorry. We hope this doesn’t ruin your chances of winning, dear! Love, Mabel
Jill slumped. “I don’t want to know.” Already aware of the Slick-in-the-park vids, she opted to search the other team members first. Antonio Seneca only yielded a Facebook profile, basic contact information, and an article about a Catholic bishop by the same name. No damage done there … yet.
Chieko Makiguchi resulted in the same basic stuff, and some photos of her being crowned Prom Queen back in high school. “Props for rocking the metallic dress.” She also found a recent short video clip of Chieko being interviewed by a roving weather reporter because she witnessed a freak hail storm crushing a garden shed. She came across as highly credible and coherent. Okay, good. Nothing character-bruising there.
It took Jill a second to remember Amaya’s last name—Jefferson—but the search results provided much more. Eight different profile pictures came up for Twitter accounts, all shades of wacko, but none of them her. Amaya’s Instagram account, however, showed dramatic photos from dance concerts. Jill kept scrolling. Her gut pinched when a photo appeared of Amaya sitting beside Milo, a selfie in which they shared a laugh, her hand on his knee.
Jill’s throat tightened.
“Hey, aren’t you Jill Ripley?”
Startled, she snapped her head up. “Huh? Who, what?”
A ripple of laughter over her left shoulder made Jill cringe, and she turned slowly to see four teens, two girls, two boys, with varying degrees of acne and oily hair. “Um, hi.”
“Are you Jill Ripley? You look just like the girl in the vid. Same dress and everything.” The bustier of the two girls adjusted the strap of her tank top and snapped her gum.
“Vid?” She slid her phone into her purse.
“Of you and Slick Patton!” She practically sang it. “He’s so hot! Did you sleep with him to get the part?”
“What?!”
A boy snickered “Well, what about it? Did you rock his world?”
With a guttural scream, Jill swung her purse over her shoulder. “Shut up! I’ve only met him once—that thing in the park earlier was twice.” She jammed the helmet on her head. “Maybe third time.”
“Ooh,” said the tanktop girl, whirring her voice like a siren. “You guys are getting serious—”
Jill revved the motor and kicked up the stand. Tucking her skirt under her thighs, she took off without checking traffic first and had to swerve to avoid a minivan. Then she broke away down the street at top speed.
Somewhere amidst the obscenities flying through her mind, a Milo-voiced repeated, Don’t drive mad. Reluctantly, she eased up on the throttle. Three miles later, she turned onto the freeway heading home, letting the wind tangle her hair like her tangled-up feelings.
“You make it home okay?”
Jill’s sigh made the reception sound staticky for a second. “Yeah. I’m back at my apartment. How’d your shoot go?”
“I don’t know what they’re going to do with it. Parker tried so many angles, I lost count. We’re definitely going for the smart-guy accomplice feel, though.”
“Like Irving in Tides of Port Delano!” Her voice perked up briefly.
“So … you okay now?”
&
nbsp; “Better. But I have to figure out how not to win with Slick endorsing me.”
“Wait, what?”
There was a long pause during which Milo felt as if he’d just stepped into a house of wonky mirrors, all twisting the reality he thought he knew.
“Milo, I don’t think I should win.”
“Of course you can! You’re awesome.”
“No, you didn’t hear me. I don’t think I should win.”
“But …” This was not an expected development. “I thought you …”
“I’m sorry, Milo. I’m so sorry!” He could hear her starting to cry and found himself patting an invisible Jill in front of him, trying to calm her down.
“What? What? Please tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s complicated. I just don’t like all the attention, and—”
“Things I never thought I’d hear Jill complain about.”
“You at your apartment now? I could come over.”
“Uh…” A conflicted emotion rattled at Milo’s ribs. “Traffic’s pretty bad right now with rush hour. I thought I’d wait for it to die down a bit before driving home. You know how I get when the roads are too crowded.” And Amaya might have invited me to meet her for dinner downtown.
There was a pause, and he wondered if Jill had read his guilty thoughts. If she could, maybe she would unravel them and explain them to him. He had no idea why he’d accepted the invitation, except that he’d been a bit disgruntled by the tiff at Tasty Taco. Now he wished he could teleport back to his apartment.
“Okay, well, be safe.”
“Sorry about earlier, Jill.”
“Why are you sorry? I’m the one that ditched you.”
“I’ll call you when I get home.”
“Okay.”
They disconnected and Milo felt a strange numbness set in. He and Jill didn’t have conversations like this … Conversations with secrets. Conversations with unreadable subtext. Conversations that came after meaningless fights and Jill blowing him off. Something had happened between them, and Milo didn’t know what.
His phone buzzed. Running late. See you in 5.
He answered the text. No prob. I got our table on patio. See you soon.
Amaya sent a pulsing heart in reply.
Milo couldn’t think about that without growing a headache, so he perused the menu. Thai food again. Thai for Amaya, Tasty Taco for Jill. Did that mean something? Both savory, but one was fancier, more exotic. One was the old reliable that you could always count on because the junk change in the cup holder always held enough for a snack.
Except he could never see Jill as cheap or commonplace.
Milo downed half of his ice water and shifted to the shadier side of the table and tried to compute his level of dirtbagness. He had only dated half a dozen women over the years, and never for longer than a few weeks. He couldn’t remember why it never worked out, just that he always felt more at home with Jill.
Until recently. He closed his eyes and smacked his forehead with the menu. What’s happening to my nice, normal reality?
“If you’re hot, we can eat inside with the AC.”
Milo looked up to see Amaya in the flowery dress she’d worn for her monolog. Her hair was swept up in a fancy twirl, and she’d put something light and sparkly on her eyelids, subtle but attractive.
She put one hand on her hip and tilted her head, an adorable look of amusement on her face. “Yoo hoo? You in there, Milo? Or did the heat already melt your brains?”
It wasn’t the heat melting his brains. It was women. He stood up and pulled her chair out.
“Oooh, a gentleman.” She lowered herself into the seat, brushing his arm with her fingertips. “Milo Halsey, where have you been all my life?”
He landed back in his own chair with a thunk, and his mouth finally shut. Wait, she’d just asked a question. What was it? So much for the Smart Guy image. “I … uh.”
Amaya let out the softest laugh. Taking his hand, she stood up and led him back indoors. “You are dying out here.”
Milo gave a weak laugh. “Heh. You know us Oregonians. If it gets over 85 degrees, we turn into a boiling puddle of ooze.”
“Uh-uh. That doesn’t sound very attractive.” She pointed to a secluded part of the restaurant. “Let’s go get cozy in that corner booth.”
Scene 12: Star Power
“Wow!” Milo set the emergency break and gazed out at the marina from the tiny gated parking lot. “Every one of those boats is bigger than my house.”
It was only the third time he’d spoken since they’d left the I-5 on the drive up to the Columbia River. Jill, still unsure of how to bring up her choice to throw the contest, had been uncharacteristically quiet, too. She feared he’d offered the ride only out of habit because he didn’t seem pleased with her company.
With a sigh, she unfastened her seatbelt and studied the scene. “So, this is the big secret? A boat dock?” Instructions from Parker had been explicit about this new shoot: Don’t let anyone follow you. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Unimpressed by the cloak-and-dagger drama, Jill scanned the yachts, all gleaming white. “I wonder why rich people don’t get more creative with the paint jobs?”
“Well, if you ever become rich and famous, you can get yourself a red boat with white polka-dots.”
Jill fidgeted with the hem of her chic pink halter and glanced at her designer jeans. “I feel underdressed.”
Milo shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I’m pretty sure I have the wrong logo on my shirt.”
Jill pointed to where Chieko’s car had pulled up beside them, and they climbed out into the late afternoon sun to greet her.
Chieko opened her car door. “Security cams? This place is legit.” A black iron gate barred entrance to the stairs leading down to the dock. “Which boat?”
“Beats me. I hope it’s that really big one on the end.”
Just as she said it, Parker appeared on the gang plank of the yacht and bounded down it.
“I wonder who it belongs to,” whispered Chieko.
Parker waved. “Thanks for being on time.” She moved to unlock the gate but hesitated. “When we get down there, do not—and I mean do not—try to peek into the boats. These people value their privacy more than you value your eyeballs.”
Milo frowned. “Celebrities, or mafia?”
The gate clicked open and Parker wagged a warning finger. “Yes. Don’t look!”
Jill and Milo exchanged a look of mild alarm.
“Forward march,” said Parker, leading the way down the stairs.
On the dock, their feet made a hollow thumping sound. A light mist of water droplets made everything gleam in the sunlight. Parker stopped at the top of the gang plank just before they boarded. Lowering her voice, she warned, “No gushing. Be professional.”
As if I could get excited over Slick any more. Jill nodded and followed Parker into the main cabin. But she didn’t see Slick. She saw Cleon, Leticia, and Irving from Tides of Port Delano sipping cocktails around the wet bar!
“Jill Ripley, Chieko Makiguchi, Milo Halsey,” said Parker formally, “meet Brock Adrian, Evangeline Erricks, and Irving Laird. You surely recognize them from Tides of Port Delano.”
Irving’s real name is Irving? Milo knew of actors who insisted on going by their real names for ego purposes, and others who had to do that because everyone kept messing up and calling them by their real name anyway. Judging by the vapid smiles of the other two actors, his bet was on the latter reason.
Jill rushed forward, but to her credit, didn’t babble or drool. Taking each by the hand, she introduced herself and said how pleased she was to meet them. Chieko followed suit, and Milo took up the rear, settling for a firm handshake and a nod. The guy who played one-line Cleon never changed his expression, but from what Milo had seen online, he was considered the epitome of sexy in the eyes of middle-aged American women.
As they finished shaking hands, Milo caught a glimpse of Slick sitting by the fir
eplace at the far end of a huge, C-shaped, white, plush sectional couch. His fingers were steepled in front of his lips, and he had a calculating edge to his gaze. Milo didn’t care for the way his eyes lingered on Jill.
“Would any of you care for a drink?” asked Brock, lifting a bottle.
“No drinking,” barked Parker. “They need their heads clear if we don’t want this to last all night.”
“Oh, I imagine we could keep them overnight,” said Slick. “We can sleep everyone here on the Lewis & Clark, can’t we, Brock?”
Milo detected a slight slur to Slick’s speech.
“Take as long as you need,” said Brock, his stoic face hinting at a conspiracy.
“Let’s just get on with this,” said Parker, unusually subdued. “Brock, would you like to go first?”
First?
“Yes, I have the bedroom all set up.” He hooked a finger at Jill. “Won’t you follow me?”
Jill, Chieko, and Milo all erupted at once. “What?!”
Brock didn’t flinch. “The camera is in place. Come along. The others can watch on the monitors.”
“Nuh-uh. Nobody said anything about a sex scene,” said Jill. “This is not cool.”
“This is show business. Daytime drama is full of romance,” said Slick. “This is your night, people. Show us what you’ve got. Make it nice and hot.”
Milo bristled and took a step forward, fists clenched. “You can’t make her. This is totally unethical.”
“Guys, guys …” Parker waved her hands and signaled for Milo, Chieko, and Jill to huddle up. They circled close, all glaring death rays at her.
“How could you do this to us?” Jill hissed.
“Jill, please.” Parker’s face betrayed her frustration. “This is another ad libbed thing. You’ll be in situations.” She eyed each of them and spoke quietly through gritted teeth. “Use your improv skills to keep Team Northwest classy.”
“But …” Jill looked mad enough to start a brawl.
Parker’s voice was barely audible. “Look, I can’t change what the producers ask us to try to film. Just what footage makes it to the screen.”
