Hollywood Nights

by Sara Celi

  “Take care of yourself, Brynn.”

  “You too,” I said, and then pushed open the grimy door.

  Fifteen minutes later, I still sat in the Corolla, cooling off my anger and frustration. Twisted might have been the best-paying job I’d had since arriving in LA, but I wouldn’t do any old thing for money. I still had standards.

  Well, sort of.

  I also had almost no money saved and no idea where I’d get another job. I’d have to call my agent the next morning and beg her for work. In passing, a few days earlier, her assistant had mentioned a print job for Sears. Catalog work could make some fast cash, and maybe I’d be able to get employment at one of the boutiques on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  I could also take Tanner up on his offer. Five hundred thousand dollars would do more than get me out of this mess. But that would be selling myself in a different way… right?

  I drove home feeling disgusted and dirty, and when I arrived I found Kelly and Shannon sitting on the living room couch. When I closed the front door, they exchanged a meaningful expression.

  “We didn’t think you’d be home so early,” Samantha said with a tittering, nervous laugh. Then she and Kelly exchanged another glance, frustrating me further. They were always doing things like this; they had their own way of shutting me out of everything.

  My roommate was also lying. Samantha wasn’t that good of an actress. Neither was Kelly.

  “What?” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  Kelly coughed twice. Technically, she had rented this shithole of an apartment; Samantha and I subleased from her. “We’ve been talking about things.”

  “There’s not enough room for three roommates in this apartment,” Samantha interjected, tossing her long blond hair. “It’s too cramped as it is.”

  “And now things are going so well for us here, so we don’t need to divide the rent three ways,” Kelly said. “But since you’ve always paid your rent on time, we’re giving you until the end of the week to move out.”

  “That’s illegal,” I said. “You can’t throw someone out. They have laws against this kind of thing.” Didn’t they? If they did, this fact, or the hint of it, didn’t seem to bother either of them.

  “You never signed a lease. We agreed at the beginning this would be a month-to-month thing,” Kelly said.

  “We’ll help you move out,” added Samantha. “And we can give you until next week. Just the other day, my friend Brad said the other day that his girlfriend needed a new roommate. Maybe you could live with her?”

  I set my tote on the floor and gave them both my most intimidating expression. If they thought I’d accept this without a fight, they were wrong. I might not have liked living in the apartment with them, but I had nowhere else to go and didn’t need more bad news on top of my already shitty night.

  But then I thought about Tanner again. Would his offer be so horrible? Maybe not.

  “You want me out by the end of next week?” I said to my soon-to-be former roommates, my arms crossed and my jaw set.

  They nodded.

  “It won’t take me long.”

  “Are you mad at us?” Kelly’s face contorted, and the sides of her mouth turned down.

  I disappeared into the hallway, yanked open the closet, found my duffel bag on the floor, and threw my clothes inside. The two of them followed me, hemming and hawing about how sorry they were, but I didn’t listen to them anymore. Before I knew it, I sat in the driver’s seat of my Corolla again, but this time with three bags in the trunk.

  I found my phone, took a deep breath, and dialed.

  Tanner picked up on the second ring. “Brynn?”

  I gulped. No going back now. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “It’s late. Almost eleven fifteen.” A pause. “I’m sort of busy right now.”

  “I figured.” I pressed onward, giving him no chance to get a word into our non-conversation. “Are you home? We need to talk. I don’t want to wait until Monday to discuss this.”

  “Brynn, I wouldn’t say—”

  “Please. I—please.” My voice broke as the raw emotion and the sheer desperation of that moment heaved in my chest. I had nothing left. This had to work. Had to. “It can’t wait. It’s hard to explain, but it can’t.”

  “All right. Anything you need. Come over.”

  In the moments before Brynn called me, I sat on the back patio of my house, looking out at the skyline and nursing a large glass of bourbon on the rocks while I thought about all of it—every single miniscule failure over the last year. I had a slew of them.

  The Flash Returns had been a huge mistake. Then, it turned out playing Mr. Darcy in the latest incarnation of Pride and Prejudice hadn’t rehabbed my career, either. Lana had left me for Harper, and gained the upper hand when it came to the public spin on our relationship. That summer, in a drunken haze, I had a huge, monster, fucking epic on-set disagreement with Academy Award-winning director Harold Liechtenstein, and someone had leaked it to the press—who then couldn’t get enough of speculating about it. Worse, ZMedia, which buttered its bread on Hollywood gossip, posted a grainy iPhone video of the argument online. Memes and gifs followed en masse, most of them focusing on one shot showing me red-faced and angry as I yelled at him, a vein about to pop in my temple. And now there were those photos of me with the Molly.

  I need to take control of this. I need to take control of this…

  The last year had been one big disaster. Even the distraction I had upstairs in my bed hadn’t been a good choice.

  The doorbell rang, and I jumped. Something inside of me had figured Brynn would back out after her phone call, no matter how desperate and agitated she’d sounded. She wouldn’t come back to Mulholland Drive. Only someone irrational and desperate would entertain the plan I had presented.

  The doorbell rang again.

  I yanked open the heavy, beveled front door, and there she stood. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t seem upset anymore, either. In fact, I thought I saw something else flicker across her face.

  Hope?

  What a strange emotion. I’d lost hope a couple of months before. Lana had taken that, along with almost everything else I cared about—except my millions. And she would have taken them, too, if she had found a way. That woman could never have enough money. Or power.

  “Nice to see you again,” I said to Brynn.

  She said the same thing to me, then rocked back and forth on her heels as an awkward silence descended over us. “Well? Aren’t you going to ask me inside?”

  “Oh, right. Come in, if you’d like.”

  She did, and I noticed the three mismatched duffel bags. “Oh, shit,” I said.

  She meant what she’d said on the phone. She was serious about entertaining my offer. Brynn regarded her luggage. “Oh, right, these. They’re basically all I need. I don’t have a lot of stuff.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder, more to steady myself than her. “So I take it this is a yes.”

  She shrugged.

  “I haven’t contacted my lawyer,” I said. “I don’t have a contract for you to sign tonight.”

  “I know. But I figured—” She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “I figured we could try this and see how it goes. What have I got to lose?” She bit her lip. “In case you haven’t noticed, Hollywood isn’t working for me. If something doesn’t change soon, I’ll probably have to leave LA and move back home.”

  In another lifetime, people would have called Brynn Price a knockout. Long, chocolate hair that tumbled down her shoulders in loose waves. Dark brown eyes. Dark eyebrows. Sharp cheekbones. A rosebud mouth and a face that didn’t need much makeup. A classic kind of beauty that reminded me of a brunette Veronica Lake.

  Strictly business, Tanner. Keep it strictly business.

  “You know, Hollywood isn’t exactly working out for me, either,” I said to Brynn as I roped myself back into the present. Then it struck me how odd a comment like that must sound. We certainly had
different definitions of what failing in Hollywood meant. I cleared my throat. “I’ll show you the pool house. And let me take your bags, okay?”

  She didn’t make a fuss about handing over the largest one.

  Located on the far end of the property at the edge of the infinity pool, my pool house had one large living room painted in a soft lime, a folded-up Murphy bed, a small kitchenette, and a full bathroom covered in olive tiles. As I showed her around, Brynn seemed to like it, and I was relieved. After she placed a bag on the dark gray love seat, she turned to me.

  “Did you decorate this place yourself?”

  “The previous owner did. They liked the color green.”

  “I can tell.”

  “Haven’t gotten around to changing it, but I figured it would be—adequate.”

  Nice word choice, dickhead.

  “Adequate. Right. Considering this is business.” She shook her head.

  “I take my business contracts seriously,” I said, admitting only to myself how much I needed this reminder.

  Brynn’s gaze met mine again, and we stared at each other for another long moment. God, she was gorgeous, and I couldn’t stop noticing. She was different from what usually wound up in my bed, and especially different from Lana in a thousand ways. Lana had a bunch of harsh, sharp lines, and she covered them in thick, dark makeup. She was the kind of woman I didn’t recognize when she washed the gobs of foundation off her face. Like many LA women, Lana had fake breasts, but her chin cost $10,000, too, and so did an operation to fix a “deviated septum” in her nose. Lana used to walk around my house in a waist-training corset four days a week and always obsessed over the color of her lipstick, never wanting it to look like she tried too hard.

  I couldn’t imagine Brynn doing any of those things. She struck me as the exact opposite—a woman who never worried about the finer points of her appearane because they never seemed out of place. She probably had no idea how lucky she had it.

  Shit. If I let it, this could get interesting.

  “How is this going to work?” she said. “What do you—?”

  “Tanner? Who’s this?”

  We turned and found Heather Hargrove leaning against the doorframe. She wore a silky kimono bathrobe and nothing else.

  “A friend,” I told Heather. “She needed a place to stay.” I walked over to Heather and kissed her on the forehead. “Go back to bed, honey. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

  She snuggled against me and her perky breasts rubbed my chest. “Don’t be too long.”

  When she got out of earshot, I turned back to Brynn. “That’s nothing. A one-night stand. Not that—an old friend.”

  Probably the first time I had ever referred to Heather Hargrove as a friend. I’d met the woman at a Super Bowl party, and she’d latched onto me. She gave good head, so I kept her around to fill some of the lonelier nights.

  “You called her honey.”

  “I call a lot of people that.”

  “Why not do this arrangement with her?” Brynn crossed her arms. “She looks like she fits right in.”

  “She doesn’t.” The skeptical expression on Brynn’s face made me curse under my breath. “She’s a porn star, okay?”

  “What?” Brynn’s eyes widened, and she recoiled.

  “We’re not dating. You don’t date a girl like that.”

  Brynn scoffed, and I knew I had screwed up once again.

  “Let me rephrase. I don’t date girls like that.”

  “Meaning you sleep with them.”

  “No—yes.” I shrugged. “For obvious reasons, it’s not family-friendly. Not good for my career.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  I held up a hand. “You didn’t. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I guess I fit in, in a way.” Her jaw tightened. “You did find me working in a strip club.”

  “But you aren’t a stripper,” I said, halfway annoyed I had to tackle this issue so early. “It’s different.”

  Her eyebrow raised. “Why were you there? You aren’t one of Twisted’s regulars.”

  I leaned against the wall and shoved my hands in my pockets. “I had plans to meet a buddy of mine at Craving, but after James dropped me off, I saw Lana walking in the VIP back entrance to the restaurant. And I didn’t want to run into her again.”

  “After what she’s done to you over the last year, I wouldn’t have wanted to run into her either.”

  “You hardly know the half of it, believe me.” I paused. “Going to Twisted turned out to be a much better decision.”

  We stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Okay,” she finally said. “How do you want to do this?”

  “Well, for starters, I don’t expect us to see much of each other when we’re here. It’s not required that we become friends. I’m worried about what happens in public. A few strategic dinners at first, some date nights, a few movie premieres—that kind of thing. We have to be seen in the most expected places. It won’t take much.”

  “And you won’t—”

  “This isn’t sex for hire,” I said. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “Okay,” she said in a flat, emotionless voice. Couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed.

  “You should find clean sheets and towels in the closet by the bathroom.” I jerked my head in that direction. “Here’s the key to the pool house. Martha has breakfast ready at nine on Saturdays and Sundays in the kitchen, so we can discuss this further tomorrow.” I made my way back to the door. “And if you need anything, you know where to find me.”

  “Will Heather be joining us?”

  “Goodnight, Brynn.”

  “Goodnight, Tanner.”

  When I walked out, I made sure I didn’t look back. Didn’t let myself see the expression on her face. Didn’t take another glance at her beautiful eyes. Another second around her and I might do something stupid.

  When I got back inside the main house, the pressure was too great. It had been so long since I’d been around anyone remotely interesting. Los Angeles had so much boring, scattered ass, and Lana had dulled almost every nerve in my body. Now, Brynn was—

  Brynn was my employee.

  I considered that again for a few minutes. Just business, no matter how much I liked the fiery, determined woman I kept seeing every time I encountered her. It didn’t work, though.

  Fuck.

  I needed a release, and I had only one way to get it. In the master bedroom, I found Heather asleep.

  She wouldn’t do. Waking her up wouldn’t fix it, anyway. Besides, why had I invited her over? I didn’t want to live in the past anymore, and Heather was nothing but that. Not many great memories there. I wanted to live in the present, where I could build a future full of good decisions and better outcomes.

  A future that started with Brynn. As a business partner, of course, as soon as I took care of a nagging ache I couldn’t control. I turned on the shower in the master bath, stripped off my clothes and stepped inside. There, standing under a waterfall of lukewarm water, I jerked off until I had put her out of my mind.

  Maybe I had made a huge mistake. Not maybe. Probably. I had probably made a huge mistake.

  I sat down on the couch in the main room. Good grief, what had I been thinking? A fake relationship was stupid. Irrational. Bizarre. The kind of thing that only happened in Los Angeles, where so much about life was already untrue. My head started to throb.

  Besides, the guy had a porn star in his bed.

  Seriously, I needed to stop this before it began, while I still had time to get out, and before any damage occurred. It wouldn’t be hard. I needed to walk back to the main house, tell him I had reconsidered, hop in my car, and drive away. He wouldn’t protest, and we’d probably never see each other again. The city alone had almost four million people, and another nine million or so lived in the surrounding metro. Our lives didn’t need to cross again.

  Determined to put an end to this before it began, I
stood up, but then my gaze fell on the bags holding the few things I cared about. If I left, where would I go? I had no place to live, and no job. Nothing.

  I looked around the room. The pool house didn’t seem so bad—small, but cozy. In fact, I hadn’t had this much space to myself since I’d left Ohio. In the kitchen, I found a refrigerator stocked with water, juice, fruit, lunchmeat, white wine, and gourmet cheeses. I grabbed a bottled water from inside the front door and gulped down half of it.

  This whole thing did come with a five-hundred-thousand-dollar payday…

  Maybe I could do this for a weekend. That could work. A few days wouldn’t be so bad. Enough time to figure out where to go and what to do next.

  The following morning, around a quarter to nine, I walked through an unlocked sliding door and into Tanner’s massive kitchen. I found a thin woman in front of the stove, wearing black leggings and an oversized blue zip sweatshirt. She whirled around, revealing the kind of body that lived in the gym when it wasn’t worshiping the sun. Her protruding collarbones almost made me recoil. LA had such crazy beauty standards.

  “You must be Martha,” I said.

  “That’s me. And you’re Brynn.” She held up a blue beveled drinking glass. “Would you like a green smoothie?”

  “Sounds delicious.” I took the glass, and then found a seat in a black woven barstool at the center kitchen island. “What else are you making?”

  “Scrambled egg whites with goat cheese.” She nodded. “Mr. Vance is particular about what he eats.”

  “Not that particular,” I said under my breath, remembering his drunken trip to Twisted. What a man of contradictions.

  If she heard my comment, Martha didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she turned back to the eggs, which had begun to crackle in the skillet on the range. “Right now, I’m cooking Mr. Vance and his—guests—three meals a day. All low-carb and protein-based, of course.”

  I sipped the smoothie. “This tastes fantastic.”

  Martha turned around from the stove. “All natural. Strawberries, spinach, wheatgrass, banana, and almond milk.”