by Abby Stern
Jess: Good luck at Ambiance tonight.
It’s 10:45 P.M.! I jump out of bed and give Marianna a quick kiss on the head, careful not to wake her, and storm out. Traffic from Robin’s is bad so I didn’t have time to drop my car off and Uber. As each second passes I’m overthinking and working myself up into a fit of hysterics as my mind repeats the news that my mother’s health hasn’t improved. I have no choice, but I want to be at Ambiance about as much as I want to be in front of a Mexican firing squad. But since I sold my soul to The Life I better not slack on any assignments. Besides, now more than ever I can’t turn down the money.
I give Gus, the bouncer, a hug after he opens the rope for me to enter. Why is it that Gus has been the most consistent man in my life throughout the years? I make my way inside and don’t even do a lap before heading straight for the bar. The bartender who helped Jessica and me and who’s waited on me countless times since then comes over.
“The usual? Champagne?” he asks, leaning toward me with the hope of increasing his tip.
“Not tonight. Vodka soda, please.” I reach into my purse for my credit card.
“Changing it up. I like it.” He’s laying it on … thick.
“Champagne is a celebratory drink. I don’t have much to celebrate right now. It’s a hard-liquor kind of night.” He laughs as he finishes dispensing the soda water into my glass and has no clue how sad that actually is for me.
“Keep it open, or close it?” he asks as I slide my credit card across the bar to him.
“Open.” I finish my first drink standing there and do my first lap around the club and don’t see any celebrities yet, so I return to the bar so I can observe from there. I don’t look conspicuous standing there alone. I catch the bartender’s eye again. “Can I have another?”
“Coming right up.” He gives me a wink.
I pace around the bar area to stay alert and my eyes continue to scan the room but I question my gut when I spot a familiar face near the DJ—Ethan. I have to do a double take to make sure it’s him. I always trust my instincts, but a club is the last place I would ever expect to see him since he was so fond of articulating his disdain for “the Hollywood scene.” Not only is he here, but he’s here with a girl. What the fuck? I’m over him but I’m becoming more pissed off as the seconds tick away. He had the audacity to criticize me and now here he is drunk off the Kool-Aid. This is the last thing I need right now. I chant Namaste to myself, trying to reach a sense of Zen. The only other comfort I have at the moment, even though superficial, is that I look like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model next to the manic pixie dream girl on his arm.
I take a huge gulp of my second vodka soda while I decide on my next move. Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of time while trying to make my decision. He catches my gaze and now the guy who broke my heart and ditched me like last month’s issue of GQ is walking toward me. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to punch him. I want to steal Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility. He’s reaches me and sadly none of these are options.
“Hi there,” Ethan says as if nothing had ever happened between us. He’s acting like I’m someone he helped with a chemistry lab in high school instead of talking about a life together with.
“Hello.” I try to annunciate every syllable so the callousness of my tone won’t go undetected over the music.
“How’ve you been?” he continues.
“Fine.”
He keeps going even though I’m being curt. “I’m glad to hear that.” He looks me up and down. I cross my arms in front of my breasts hoping he takes my new body language as a cue, since he’s clearly not getting the hint from me being curt.
“You look great.” I’m not even going to bother replying to this. For some reason, he takes this as an invitation to continue to pry. “You working?”
“What do you think, Ethan?” This is all too much. He knows this is my night at Ambiance. My head is spinning and not from alcohol. My mom, Holiday, Nick, now Ethan is back like a Netflix TV reboot—I can’t take this anymore! I never got any closure from our breakup and I have hundreds of things I’ve wanted to say to him. I want to ask if he ever really loved me. I want to ask if he’s happy now that I’m not in his life. I want to ask him how he could walk away and never look back. I want to know why it’s so easy for guys like him and Nick to walk away from me. But none of these things come out of my mouth.
“Are you fucking kidding me? That’s what I get after almost four years together? Years of me supporting your dream—and you bail when you don’t like something. You’re a pussy, Ethan!” I shout. I have to for him to hear me over the music. It’s loud but I’m louder and he heard every word. He takes a step back, rattled by my public outburst, but I’m not letting him get off this easy for a second time. He ran away before but now it’s my turn to say what I need to say. The DJ drops another beat and increases the volume. So do I. “Who the fuck do you think you are that you can walk up to me and be nice and pretend like we’re good and you didn’t do a horrible thing?” He tries to answer but I won’t let him. “You think you’re the good guy? You’re not. Far from it. You’re not nice. You’re—”
“Stop it, you’re causing a scene,” he says in a stern voice that somehow seems to cut through the club sounds without an increased volume.
“Oh, now that your public profile is rising you don’t want to be involved in anything that might make you look bad, huh?” I scream at the top of my lungs when the music becomes deafening and because my anger has boiled over. “Fuck you!”
“That’s enough. You know exactly why I left. I wouldn’t have left, Ella, but I couldn’t stand dating Bella anymore. Don’t act like I spontaneously walked out. You consistently chose your job over our relationship.”
“Excuse me?”
Ethan gets his face close to mine to make sure his point is heard. “Now who’s pretending? You cared more about Bella and Hollywood than you did about us and that’s fine. Just fucking own it!”
And with that, I take the remainder of my vodka soda and throw it on him as if I’m on a Bravo reality show and storm straight back to the bar since I just wasted my perfectly good cocktail. I notice Ethan’s manic pixie dream girl rush to his side after I doused him with my drink. She dutifully brings him napkins and helps him clean up. I turn my back to them, lean on the bar, and order another vodka soda.
“Bella?” Oh God, now what? Or now who, I suppose, is a more appropriate question. The last thing I want is another altercation. I slowly spin around, holding my breath with a clenched jaw. It’s Sexy Indie Film Actor! I’ve never been so happy to see a familiar face. He’s oozing sex appeal, and everything inside me wants him to make me feel better.
“Hi!”
“You look fantastic.” He’s slurring his words but I don’t care that he’s already beyond hammered and to him I probably look like a blur more than a beauty. Maybe tonight can be salvaged after all. I look over at Ethan to make sure he sees me with Sexy Indie Film Actor, and he does as he’s in the middle of probably telling his girlfriend that I’m a sociopath, but I couldn’t care less. “I haven’t seen you since that after-party at Twentysomething CW Bad Boy Heartthrob’s place.”
“I know.”
“He’s around here somewhere.” His search of the crowd is futile in his inebriated state.
“That’s okay, I’d rather be talking to you.” I smile and make sure that for him my body language is inviting and enticing.
“What do you say; shots?”
I normally don’t do shots, especially while I’m sipping on a cocktail. Historically they don’t end well for me, but what the hell? “Shots!” I agree, perhaps a little too overeagerly. I want to numb myself after Ethan-gate.
“Bartender, two shots of tequila.” He leans on the bar and I’m not sure if it’s to flirt or for stability, but either way it’s hot. I mean, he is Sexy Indie Film Actor, after all. “Who are you here with?”
“I’m all by my lonesome tonight.”
I sweep my fingers across his forearm so there’s no confusion that I’m trying to seduce him. I need to feel desired tonight. “I needed to get out of the house and let off some steam.” He places his hand on my hip and pulls me toward him so our faces are only inches apart from each other.
“I might be able to help you with that.” He explores my hip with his hand.
“Oh, yeah?” The bartender slides our shots in front of us and neither of us breaks eye contact when we reach for our shots.
“Cheers.” He downs his shot without wincing.
“Cheers.” With Holiday I used to love toasting, but now I loathe it. I cough on the straight alcohol after I swallow.
As soon as we place our glasses back on the bar we’re eye-fucking each other.
“Hey, do you want to play a game with me?” I ask.
“Yeah, I would like to play with you.” I pop a piece of gum in my mouth and grab Sexy Indie Film Actor’s hand and lead him toward the bathrooms. “I don’t know what you’re thinking but I like where that pretty little head of yours is at.” I open the door to the men’s room and after he stumbles in I lock the door behind him. He grabs me and kisses me and our sexual chemistry is palpable. “So what’s this game?” he asks. I run my hand along the top of the toilet tank and it comes up clean. I moan. “What’s wrong?”
“I was trying to show you the Cocaine Game. Both of us were supposed to run our hands back there and see who could pick up the most,” I huff.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Sexy Indie Film actor reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small bag of cocaine and begins cutting it along the back of the toilet.
He finishes cutting the coke into lines. Before he rolls up a hundred-dollar bill and attempts to hand it to me, he licks his finger, dips it in the bag of drugs, and smears some of the powder over his gums.
“No, thanks. That’s all you.” The last thing I need to add to my already fucked-up mind is narcotics.
“You sure?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I may be fucked up but I’m lucid enough to know that drugs will only intensify all of my not-so-warm-and-fuzzy feelings. He shrugs his shoulders and does both lines then grabs my hips again and gently pushes me up against the door before he kisses me again. That “drunk, sloppy, I don’t care that we’re both fucked up right now” kind of kiss.
The men’s room wasn’t my first choice for a lust-fueled rendezvous, but at a Los Angeles nightclub it’s either that or the photo booth. Those are the only two semiprivate make-out options. The ladies’ room always has a bathroom attendant selling perfume, hair spray, gum, and cigarettes and making sure that only one person is in a stall at a time. It’s more to make sure that they aren’t doing drugs together than to prevent any sort of hookup, but the attendant is vigilant and there would be no way to sneak a guy in, and clearly Sexy Indie Film Actor had both vices on his mind.
“You taste like cocaine,” I moan when I briefly tear my lips away from his for the first time in what feels like hours but in reality is minutes.
“You taste minty fresh,” he compliments. Our faces are only inches apart. After a short beat we both say, “Win-win?” In this moment, we are two people that are connected through unspoken pain. He takes out the bag of coke again and does another small line before shoving his face back toward mine. Everything is spinning and all I hear is rap music blaring at decibel levels that must not be safe for human ears, but I don’t care.
It feels like time and energy have stopped and we are the only two people in existence. I’m sure it’s just the alcohol. We return to our lip-lock that is somehow violent and romantic at the same time and starts to heat up even more. When I woke up this morning I didn’t think that I would have the Sexy Indie Film Actor’s hands traveling inside of my shirt and attempting to unhook my bra. As much as part of my brain is telling me to go for this, I’m not in any state to take things further with him. I once again break my lips away from his.
“We should go back in,” I tell him. He hears me but instead of answering proceeds to kiss my cheek and my jawbone and continues down my neck. “Seriously, we should go back in.”
“Are you sure?” Of course I’m not sure. There are about three million women who would hire a hit man to take me out and take my place at this very second and I’m nursing one broken heart and reliving another. But I have to get back inside. I nod my head. He continues kissing my neck and décolletage until I turn the lock on the door that my back is pressed up against and I leave Sexy Indie Film Actor in the stall. There’s a few men waiting to use the restroom and I try to avoid eye contact as I make my way to the door.
I wait for him around the corner and he brings me to his table where, lo and behold, Twentysomething CW Bad Boy Heartthrob is seated with his harem and bottle service. As we join them, Sexy Indie Film Actor passes the bag of cocaine back to its rightful owner aka Twentysomething CW Bad Boy Heartthrob.
“You want a drink?” Sexy Indie Film Actor asks me. His are hypnotizing. I know I shouldn’t but …
“I’ll have one more.” I stare at the various bottles resting in a large ice bucket on our table and the standard fruit juice mixers. It’s cute that he wants to play bartender, and I do really want another drink. He gives me a quick peck on the lips before he grabs a bottle of vodka to mix me a sugar-fueled beverage of his choosing. The girls in Twentysomething CW Bad Boy Heartthrob’s posse are giving me major side-eye due to the gender ratio of females to the two actors. Sexy Indie Film Actor lays his arm around me and leans back on the banquette with the drinks completed. He tries to tell me about the upcoming role that his representation thinks will get him an Oscar or a nomination at the very least. I can’t make out much of what he’s saying since the music has been turned up even louder and I’m also keeping an eye on Twentysomething CW Bad Boy Heartthrob, who is now brazenly doing lines of cocaine off our table without caring who sees him. He snorts line after line without hesitation, and any allure he might have been able to salvage after the incident at his house is 100 percent gone now.
I excuse myself a few times to go to the ladies’ room to take notes for my file, and I also politely tell Sexy Indie Film Actor he can’t join me for another rendezvous. I do a lap each time I walk back, and no other celebrities have shown up. I’m literally sitting in the middle of my story tonight. I still have my phone in my hand when Sexy Indie Film Actor grabs it and poses with me and snaps a selfie.
“We look hot,” he says, admiring the photo. We take more and after we’re done duckfacing and posing, Twentysomething CW Bad Boy Heartthrob is finally out of drugs but isn’t done.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, motioning to Sexy Indie Film Actor. “My guy is gonna meet me in ten and we’ll bring the girls back and get an after-party goin’.” Sexy Indie Film Actor agrees.
“You wanna come with us? With me?” He’s eye-fucking me and I’m fairly certain he wants to actually fuck me but there’s no way this will be a good decision. Besides, I didn’t lose two of the most important people in my life to leave early and possibly miss something only for Victoria to end up firing me. Bella gives him her best answer.
“I can’t tonight.” Sexy Indie Film Actor looks dejected. I am probably the only (stupid) girl to reject him since he’s been famous. “Rain check?”
“’Night, Bella.” He leans in for one last kiss and the entourage is off, following their messiah. I leave the table to ward off any suspicion about why I’m staying when my entire group left and return to my post at the bar. I stare at my phone, wanting to text Holiday that I just made out with Sexy Indie Film Actor. I suddenly miss Nick and I torture myself by opening our text history.
Nick: Miss you.
Nick: Can’t wait to see you tonight, babe!
Nick: Wish I were still in bed cuddling with your perfect sexy ass …
Nick: I’ve fallen for you faster and harder than I ever imagined possible.
I reread them over and over and over again, trying to reconcile these messages wi
th the last few days. I know I should delete them but I can’t physically bring myself to do it and continue to keep my nose buried in my iPhone.
After I’ve sufficiently tortured myself I get up to do another lap around the club. I’m looking but I’m not really paying attention. The reality of my life sets in. No Nick. No Holiday. My mom’s illness … and I’m terrified. I keep asking what if’s about all of them, especially my mom. I know I have to think positively, but it’s natural to be concerned and this is all a little much to process while I’m staring at go-go dancers.
“You don’t look like you’re having any fun,” a drunk guy tells me as he accosts me near the bar. I’m not. “Come on, put that thing down and come dance with me!” He tries to pull my phone from my hand.
“Get away from me!” I yell as I shove him away.
“Jesus, lighten up, sweetheart. You’re at a club. You know that, right?” He turns around and mumbles “bitch” audibly enough so I could hear before he returns to his group of douche-bag friends. I look at my phone and it’s 1:50 A.M. Minutes later, as soon as the lights come up, I buy a bottle of water from the bar and close out.
As I pull out of the parking lot I realize I’m a little buzzed. A little more than buzzed if I’m honest. I wanted to get out of there so badly and get into my bed as fast as possible I didn’t even think about leaving my car. It’s not a decision I recommend but I can do this. I’ve made the drive to Holiday’s a million times and as long as I focus I’ll be okay. I can’t help but replay tonight’s events in my mind as I drive, trying to make sense of them. I need to go to bed and I need to wake up tomorrow and clear my head and figure out where I’m going to live and how to move on with my life. Almost immediately after I turn onto Laurel Canyon I hear my phone go off with a message alert. At this hour it might be important so I fish it out of my purse with one hand while keeping my other hand on the steering wheel and my eyes on the road. I quickly look at the message and it’s an alert from The Life.
