The Princess and the Porn Star

by Lauren Gallagher

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Trust me, there’s nothing you can ask that I haven’t answered a few hundred times already.”

  She looked at me and grinned shyly. “Yeah, but I’ve never asked anyone.”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  She laughed a little. “Okay. So, is it different? Being, um, being with someone on-camera versus…not?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I popped a piece of the Danish in my mouth. “Night and day.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course.”

  “In what way?” She paused. “Stop me if that’s too personal, I’m just dying of curiosity.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Okay, you’ve watched porn before, right?”

  She jumped, and I thought I might have offended her, but in spite of the red in her cheeks, she said, “Sure. Who hasn’t?”

  “You’d be surprised.” I brought up my cup, pausing with the straw almost to my lips. “But, anyway, it’s always the most athletic, enthusiastic sex imaginable, right?”

  “In between making ridiculous faces at the camera.”

  I choked on my coffee.

  She giggled behind her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  I coughed and glared at her. “No you’re not.”

  “You’re right.” The giggle turned into a snicker, and I couldn’t help laughing in between coughing a couple more times. I took another drink, wondering why my heart was beating so fast. This was a subject that never made me uncomfortable—it couldn’t, after all this time—but with her? I felt like a kid. Talking about this subject with her of all people, I’d need something a bit stronger than a cold coffee before long.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Most athletic, enthusiastic sex imaginable. Go on.”

  “You have any idea how long it takes to shoot a porno?”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

  “Let’s just say it’s generally measured in hours,” I said.

  “Oh God…”

  “Yeah. I mean, there’s breaks, and we do get some recovery time, but make no mistake: it’s grueling. More than most people realize. Plus, well, the sets aren’t always…ideal for performing.”

  Cradling her coffee cup between her hands, Rachel furrowed her brow. “How so?”

  “Well, for example, there was this one girl I worked with, I don’t know, two years ago?” I shook my head and laughed. “God, she was a bitch.”

  “That bad?”

  “That bad. Thought she was God’s gift to everything. Which I can usually deal with. I just think about something else while I’m…” I paused, flicking my eyes up to meet hers, and then my cheeks warmed a little as I said, “I just think about something else. But this one, she had it written into her contract that she called the shots as far as the temperature on the set.”

  Rachel’s eyebrow quirked. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. I guess she was the type who’d sweat if it was above sixty-five, and she didn’t want to sweat on camera.”

  “Heaven forbid someone sweats during sex,” she muttered.

  I snickered. “Well, they do keep some of the sets cool specifically for that reason. But this woman? I don’t know what temperature it actually was, but it was fucking cold. Like, a few degrees above being able to see your breath.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Yeah. And…” A little more heat rushed into my cheeks. “Okay, I don’t think I have to explain how cold can, um, affect a guy, right?”

  She put her hand over her mouth, but not before an amused squeak escaped. “I’m sorry.”

  I laughed. “No, it’s okay. It’s funny looking back now, but at the time… Jesus…” I grimaced. “Trying to stay ‘in the game’, as it were, is one thing. When it’s three hours on a freezing cold set?” I shuddered.

  “Oh, I can’t even imagine.” She absently played with the handle on her coffee cup. “So, were you able to, erm, work with her?”

  “Didn’t have much choice,” I said. “It wasn’t fun, but it was in my contract, so I gritted my teeth and kept myself going by thinking about spending the entire damned evening in my hot tub.”

  “I don’t blame you.” She took a drink. “So do you have any unreasonable demands written into your contract?”

  “Nah. Though I’ve gotten a little bit of flak for refusing to do bareback scenes and only doing scenes with women who’ve been screened since their last scene.”

  “That…seems pretty reasonable, actually.”

  “Yeah, but everyone’s going to bitch about something.” I shrugged. “If the actresses don’t want to be screened, or the director doesn’t like how condoms look on-camera, then I turn down the job.”

  “You can do that now,” she said. “But what about when you were first starting out?”

  “I was still pretty adamant about it back then. Occasionally meant the difference between paying rent on time or not, but usually, everybody’s screened and insisting on condoms anyway. The industry’s been pretty clean since even before I got involved in it.” I sipped my coffee. “I just added the clause to make sure I was covered. So to speak.”

  “Seems like a smart move.” She idly tugged at the bill of her cap, lifting it enough to let a little more light reach her stunning eyes. Her eyes, which had lost focus like she had an unspoken thought on the tip of her tongue.

  “Something else you wanted to ask?” I’d heard it all. The questions were easier to answer than they were to ask most of the time, so it—

  “Are you happy with your career?” she asked suddenly.

  I sat back. Okay, that was one people didn’t usually ask. People didn’t ever ask. “I…”

  “I mean, even if it’s not what you had in mind when you came out here?”

  I rolled the question around in my head for almost a minute before I answered. “I can’t complain. It’s got its drawbacks, and it’ll probably keep me from ever getting any serious acting jobs, but…” I shrugged and played with my straw again. “But it’s been an experience. Good living. Lot of fun. Met a lot of great people.” I lifted my gaze to meet hers. “So, yeah. Yeah, I’m happy.”

  ‘That’s good,” she said quietly.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Well, let’s see how my career goes this time before I decide if I’m happy with it.”

  “You were successful before.”

  “For a while.”

  “Were you happy then?”

  She pursed her lips, glancing out the window at the mostly deserted street. “Honestly?” Her eyes flicked up to meet mine. “I was miserable.” Before I could press any further, she asked, “So how long do you think you’ll stay in this business?”

  “Oh, I’d say Buck Harder’s got a few years left. The money’s great, and it’s fun.” I paused. “Of course, I don’t want to be that guy who’s struggling just to get through a scene. I’d rather go out while I’m still at my peak than get to that point, so I’ll retire before I let myself get to that point.”

  “What will you do after you retire?”

  “Don’t know yet. I’m enjoying it for right now, and I’ll figure out where to go after this when I get there. One career at a time, you know?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And, hey,” I said with a grin, “for better or worse, both of our careers are better than sitting in a cubicle all day, am I right?”

  “Oh my God, yes. What isn’t?” She raised her mostly empty coffee cup. “To not being confined to an office.”

  “Cheers.” I grinned and tapped my drink against hers.

  She gestured at the counter. “I’m going to go get a refill. Do you want anything?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks.”

  She got up and went to the counter. While she was gone, I couldn’t help sneaking a few looks at her. This was a side of Olivia Taylor I’d never seen before, and she had my pulse all kinds of screwed up. Dressed down, relaxed, and out from under the limelight, she was just Rachel, an
d Rachel was…my God, she was sexy. Didn’t hurt that those jeans held onto her ass and hips just perfectly. And a hot girl in a Star Wars shirt? Just the kind of woman who’d have me stumbling over my words at my annual incognito pilgrimage to ComiCon.

  She picked up her coffee and started back, so I shifted my gaze away just to give myself a chance to catch my breath and maybe regain some semblance of dignity.

  The transaction had taken less than five minutes, but her expression had soured considerably when she came back.

  I tilted my head. “Something wrong?”

  She sighed and glanced back toward the baristas. “Does anyone ever recognize you on the street?”

  Great. They must have said something to her. In spite of my irritation with the women behind the counter, I smirked. “If they do, they usually don’t say anything.”

  Rachel laughed softly. “Yeah, I guess they wouldn’t, would they?”

  “Not when it’s the equivalent of saying, ‘Hey, guess what? I watch enough porn to recognize faces!’”

  That time, she laughed for real. “I never thought of that.”

  “Neither did I,” I said with a grin. “Not until I was in this line of work, anyway.” I nodded past her in the general direction of the front counter. “Barista give you a hard time?”

  “Well, she didn’t know it was me. She asked if I was Olivia Taylor, and I…” I sighed. “You know, it’s easiest to do the whole ‘Oh, I get that all the time’ thing sometimes, but I never know who’s going to just brush it off and walk away, and who’s going to start ranting and raving about what a hot mess Olivia Taylor is.”

  “Makes you wonder how they talk about their friends,” I muttered.

  Her hand stopped midway to her coffee cup. “Never thought about it like that.”

  “People gossip. Just easier to talk about celebrities because we’re not real people to them.”

  “Good point.” She shook her head. “Though it doesn’t help that the media twists every goddamned thing around or has something snide to say about everything. I mean, did you hear about when I was on Marooned Celebrities?”

  I nodded. After I’d washed down a bite of the Danish with some of my latte, I said, “Yeah. You and Jessica Hailey both got sick on that one, didn’t you?”

  “Brown recluse bites,” Rachel said. “And you know, since she and I have both been to rehab before, that punk gossip blog Chatty & Catty actually suggested we got ourselves bitten on purpose.”

  “On purpose? Really?”

  “Apparently he thinks we’re stupid enough to try to get high off spider venom.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “It’s no wonder people think Jessica and I are idiots.”

  “You know the media,” I said with a sympathetic shrug. “They’ll twist anything they can into the most negative interpretation possible.”

  “Jerks,” she muttered. “I really try not to pay attention to the things they say, but…” Her eyes flicked toward the baristas, then out the window again. “I’m not going to lie. It’s hard.”

  “I believe it,” I said. “Most of the people I work with don’t get too much exposure in the gossip rags. Nobody knows who we are, and those who do won’t admit it, so no one’s interested in what we do. But I’ve seen the shit they say about everyone in Hollywood or the music biz.” Shaking my head, I sighed. “I think I’d go crazy.”

  “Some of us do,” she said quietly.

  There was some relief in her posture compared to when she came back from the counter, a hint of relaxation, but the topic obviously bothered her.

  “So when did you know you wanted to be a musician?” I asked.

  Rachel brightened a bit. “I don’t know, to be honest. I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said. “You wanted it from the time you were a kid, and you made it happen. That’s a pretty rare thing.”

  “Well, let’s not break out the champagne yet,” she said dryly. “We still don’t know if this thing’s going to fall apart again.”

  “I can’t imagine it will,” I said.

  She eyed me, furrowing her brow slightly. “What makes you say that?”

  “Presumably, you’re wiser now,” I said. “You probably know what caused everything to collapse last time, and I get the feeling you’re smart enough not to repeat those mistakes.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t extend beyond her lips. “Let’s hope so.” She took a deep breath. “We’ll find out soon enough if my fans have forgiven me.”

  “Yeah, I meant to ask,” I said. “When’s the album due out?”

  “Soon.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Between you and me, the reason we’re shooting this thing in a day? Budget, for one thing, but their plan is to get it edited, packaged and ready to drop three days after the album goes live.”

  “Which is when?”

  “Three weeks.”

  I stared at her. “Three weeks? Even my work doesn’t get turned around that quickly.”

  “Believe me, I know. The video was supposed to be done right around the time we finished recording, but the bigwigs and the director couldn’t agree on, well, anything. It kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed, and now, they’ve got postproduction on standby to work night and day and get this thing finalized on time.” She laughed. “At least they can’t blame it on me this time.”

  I chuckled. “Doesn’t mean they won’t.”

  “Don’t I know it?” She rolled her eyes again. “So anyway, the plan is to finish the video, and once that’s in the bag, they’ll start promoting the album.”

  “Three weeks before it goes on sale.”

  “Probably more like one week, if that,” she said. “They’ve got all kinds of interviews and appearances lined up already. I’m not sure what they told anyone, or if they made them sign the same kind of nondisclosure agreements we all had to sign, but—”

  “You had to sign that too?”

  Rachel nodded. “You should have seen the ream of crap I signed when this whole thing started.”

  I whistled. “I can only imagine.”

  “Such is the life of a musician,” she muttered, thumbing the handle on her cup.

  “Yeah. Hooray showbiz.”

  “Uh-huh.” She raised her cup in a mock toast before taking a drink.

  “But you enjoy it, don’t you?” I asked. “The music?”

  “Oh yes, definitely.” She smiled. “Believe me, I wouldn’t put up with Risen Star’s crap if I didn’t love the music and performing as much as I do.”

  Good God, her smile was beautiful. It was anyway, but especially like this, when it was genuine and heartfelt. She wore happiness so well. Maybe this time around, her career would let her wear it more.

  “So,” she said. ”What else do you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, hobbies. Things outside of…your job.”

  “Well, I used to work on cars,” I said, “but ever since I fucked up my neck, I haven’t done it much.”

  “I suppose leaning over an engine doesn’t do much for your neck.”

  I cringed, remembering a few too many unpleasant evenings spent holding hot packs against a cable-tight neck spasm. “Not really, no.”

  She shuddered and offered a sympathetic grimace. “Ouch.”

  “What about you? Hobbies?”

  “Honestly? Music is my life.”

  “You don’t do anything else?”

  She grinned. “Well, I do have a bit of a nerd streak.”

  “Do you?” I glanced at her T-shirt, and raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  She looked down, then laughed. “Guess it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily. Retro T-shirts are trendy, so…”

  “Yeah, well. The shoe fits, in this case. And I’m…a little bit of a gamer.”

  I almost choked on my coffee again. Oh, be still my beating heart. “Seriously?”

  More
color in her cheeks. “Yeah.”

  “What system?”

  “Xbox, mostly.”

  “You too?” I grinned. “Maybe we should exchange handles.”

  Her eyes lit up. “You’re a gamer?”

  I nodded.

  She leaned forward, resting her elbow on the table and pressing her chin into her palm. “If you tell me you play Call of Duty, we might have to take a detour to Vegas.”

  I leaned closer. “Your car or mine?”

  Rachel threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, it’s on. Do not let me leave here without your gamer handle.”

  “Well, that assumes you can handle playing against—”

  “Oh, please.” She waved a hand and rolled her eyes. “I grew up playing against three older brothers. You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  And just like that, we were lost in gamer talk, carrying on like we’d just bumped into each other in a Game Stop or something. Comparing trophies, talking trash, bitching about campers and the twelve-year-olds who used the game chatter to try out all their new curse words.

  Before either of us knew it, the coffee shop had mostly cleared out, the baristas had all switched out with the next shift, and the clock above the stage said it was quarter past eleven.

  Next thing I knew, we were out on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop. We punched each other’s gamer handles—PrincessBadass? Awesome—into our phones, but I didn’t quite work up the nerve to ask for her number too. Even if we had just spent the entire evening talking like the geeks we were, she was still Olivia Taylor and I was still Buck Harder. There were certain lines people just didn’t cross in this business, though we’d already crossed a few just by being here.

  “Where are you parked?” I asked.

  She gestured down the street. “That way. About a block and a half down.”

  “I’ll walk you back to your car.” I paused. “If that’s all right?”

  She smiled. “Sure. I don’t mind at all.”

  We didn’t talk on the way down the sidewalk. Side by side, lost in our own thoughts, we walked along the mostly deserted street.

  We stopped beside a parked car. Keys jingled, and Rachel gestured at the car. “Well. This is mine.”