We touched our glasses and swallowed the whiskey in a single gulp.
“Really though,” he poured two more shots, “what’d you do to Holly?”
I pressed my hands to my eyes, not wanting to think about the pretty brunette with an invisible leash around my dick, “I kinda broke her martini when I trampled her.”
“That’s it?” Preston paused with his shot glass half-raised.
“Yeah. I apologized, but she was pissed and stormed out.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
“You should call her tomorrow and apologize again.” He set his empty shot glass down in front of him and slid a business card to me, “She’s not usually so easily shaken.”
My stomach sank when I read it.
“Are you shitting me?” I asked as the panic set in.
“Nope. Make amends.” The little shit walked off without another word.
“Fuck me.” I downed the shot he had left in front of me and stared down at the business card.
Holly Nash it read in bold black letters Casting Director
The name of the company was one anyone on either coast would recognize.
I had spilled a martini on a casting director with the largest casting agency in Hollywood.
Vodka-soaked olives had literally crushed my dreams.
I flopped down onto the couch with a dramatic flourish and a groaned loudly.
“Stop it, Holly. It can’t have been that bad.” Becks set the glasses of wine she had chased me through the kitchen with on my glass-topped coffee table.
“It was that bad,” I corrected her, “and get some fucking coasters.”
She ignored my request and shoved my feet off the couch so she could sit down, “Only you could attend a party with the three hottest men on the planet and find a reason to storm out without saying goodbye.”
I was beginning to regret my decision to call in the cavalry.
As my best friend, she should’ve been agreeing with whatever bullshit was coming out of my mouth, nodding sympathetically, and gasping at all the right times. The person sitting by my feet staring at me expectantly couldn’t have been my best friend. Someone had taken my Rebecca and replaced her with a doppelganger. I had stepped into Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and my best friend had been replaced by an alien, hell-bent on taking over the human race by replacing us with mindless clones.
“Who are you?” I asked accusingly, “And don’t make any sudden movements or I will kick you in the face with my deceptively fashionable designer heels.”
“You’re being a baby, Holly. Use your words and tell me what happened.”
I sat up and snatched my glass of wine off the coaster-less glass surface and threw myself against the back of the couch like a pouty five year old.
“He is evil and must be destroyed.”
“Who?” the best friend thief leaned forward to retrieve her own glass.
“Porter Hale. He is Satan incarnate and we should call the Vatican right now and have them send an exorcist.”
Becks’ clone snorted into her wine glass, “You want the pope to exorcise a porn star? I mean, the dude’s pretty liberal as far as popes go, but I don’t think he’d go for that.”
I took another gulp of my merlot before continuing my tirade, “For the sake of our own species, we’ll have to take it upon ourselves then. He has some kind of supernatural demonic voodoo power that saps your brain cells and makes your vagina turn against you. One look from him and you go completely stupid. You find yourself dashing for the nearest Depends to keep yourself from leaking down both legs.”
“Finally getting to the juicy stuff!” the Rebecca-bot taunted, “Go on.” She folded her legs underneath her and watched me with those inhumanly joyous eyes over the rim of her wine glass—which was suspiciously full still, further confirming that she wasn’t actually my Becks.
“You’re a bitch and I hate you,” I spat as I emptied my glass and rose for a refill. Rebecca-bot stayed on her perch while I considered running out the front door and leaving her to sit there waiting for me to return. Her batteries would run out eventually, right?
“What about Ryan and Roman?” she shouted after I had made my way into the kitchen.
I just rolled my eyes and pored my wine.
“They were fine,” I huffed and returned to my seat, “Preston and Parker don’t seem to be of the same tainted bloodline. Preston was his usual flirty self and Parker was too busy taking off his clothes and shaking his ass to even notice that I was there. Hard to notice a stranger when your pants are stuffed full of dollar bills.”
“Uuuuuuugh!” Becks groaned, squeezing her thighs together and pinching her eyes shut, “Of course I would miss that! Next time you get invited to one of those parties, you better get a plus one! Otherwise I will have no choice but to follow you, scale the security fence, climb a rain gutter, break a window, and infiltrate with my mad ninja skills.”
I laughed at the scene that played through my head as she spoke and felt some of the tension drain out of my shoulders. The paranoid delusion that my best friend had been swapped out for an alien robot fungus-clone quickly faded and I put my feet in her lap. I tipped my head back against the armrest on my end of the massive chocolate colored leather sofa and closed my eyes.
“Seriously, Becks, that guy fucked up my pussy. It took on a life of its own and all but jumped on his leg like an overly friendly Labrador.”
She rubbed a hand over my freshly-shorn shin and clicked her tongue, “Aww… Tell Becks all about it.” She took a sip of her wine and smacked her lips, “And don’t bother sparing me the X-rated details.”
I recounted my sex organ’s hostile takeover of my brain in detail for her. When I got to the part where he smacked into me and spilled my drink, she finally gasped out loud and spoke for the first time since I’d started my story, “He caught you? You were crushed against his body? Did you cop a feel?”
“For fuck’s sake, Becks! No! I certainly did not cop a feel! My pussy was on fire and my brain was telling me to lie down on the floor, pull my dress over my head, and beg him to ravish me! I did what any respectable woman would do! I yelled at him for being a clumsy oaf and stormed out with what little dignity I had left!”
Her mouth dropped open and she stared at me like I had started speaking Japanese. I left her just like that as I rose to refill our wine glasses. She still had the same look of shocked horror plastered to her face when I returned and set our glasses down on the ceramic coasters she refused to use.
“You have lost your fucking mind, Holly. You haven’t had sex in, how long has it been now? A year? Two?”
“Three.”
She whistled low through her teeth, “You haven’t had sex in three years and the first man to have any kind of impact on your clit has you crying for exorcism? You’re broken, honey. I don’t know if I can fix this.”
“Why do I call you in an emergency?” I groaned.
“I ask myself the same question every time. It’s not like I’ve ever been good at the coddling thing you seem to crave. I’m going to tell you the same thing I do every time your libido rears its pretty little head and scares you to death: Plug the leak with a dick and quit bitching.”
“That’s your advice for everything,” I countered.
“It’s good advice. You should take it sometime.”
“I want the Rebecca-bot back.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” I buried my face in my wine and reveled in my underhanded win.
“Really though,” I said at length, “do you think the Vatican would send someone?”
“We’re not Catholic.”
“They don’t know that.”
“But God does and He’s pretty tight with the pope from what I hear.”
“You’re probably right,” I pouted into my wine glass for a moment.
It was then, as I stared into the swirling burgundy of the alcoholic grape juice in my hand, that I had an epiphany, “
Catholics drink wine, right?”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Becks replied warily, “but yes.”
“Where do I join? Do I have to get baptized? And if so, do they just hit me with the metal thing full of holy water, or do they actually have to dunk me in a river? I think I could handle the metal thing, but there’s no way in hell you’re getting me in the L. A. River.”
“Oh my God, Holly. You’re paranoid. Stop it. We’re not joining the Catholic church just so the pope might send an exorcist to banish the imaginary demons from your porn star.”
“He’s not my porn star!” I shrieked, mortified, “If anything, he’s your porn star! You’re the one obsessed with the whole damn family! Maybe I should have you exorcised for good measure!”
Becks held up her hands in a “don’t get crazy” gesture and leaned away from me as far as the couch would let her. “I’m just trying to be the voice of reason here, Holly. You’re a little off your rocker at the moment and it’s time to come back down to earth. I’m not possessed. Neither is Ryder. And you can’t join the Catholics. You don’t have enough guilt to be Catholic.”
She had a point on the guilt issue. I was notorious for being the “good girl” out of all of our friends. I have never been in trouble with the law, I’m not a whore, I never go out drinking on a work night, and my tits and ass are generally completely covered. I really haven’t ever done anything to be guilty about—at least not by Los Angeles standards. The worst thing I ever do is lower my eyes and sprint like an Olympic runner when a homeless person asks me for money.
Add dirty people clothed in trash bags to my list of irrational fears—right below demonic porn stars with the power to melt panties with a glance.
“Have sex with him, Holly,” her eyes bored into me with all the seriousness of a funeral director, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“AIDS!” I shouted before I could stop myself.
My best friend immediately spewed her mouthful of wine like a miniature, rose-tinted old faithful.
“Dammit, woman!” I screamed as I jumped off the couch, “Towels! We need towels! Paper ones! In the kitchen! Go get paper towels out of the kitchen! Hurry up before it sets in and stains anything!”
Looking back, I have no idea why I just stood there with my glass of wine in my hand, doing the Flash Dance, and flailing a limp wrist in the general direction of the volcanic wine spill, but it happened and I’m not ashamed. I blame the hormone overdose and too much wine.
Becks scrambled off to the kitchen giggling and returned with tears in her eyes, gasping for air, with an entire roll of paper towels. We quickly wiped down the leather and the hardwood, making sure we took care of anything porous before we went to work on the glass.
I can confidently accredit my friendship with Becks to one thing: her infectious laugh. It’s what brought us together when we first met, and it’s still one of my favorite sounds in the whole world. By the time we finished cleaning up the last drops of wine, even I had surrendered to its power and giggled alongside her.
We sat there surrounded by soggy paper towels stained blood-red with wine and laughed until we cried from the pain in our sides.
“This,” I gasped, “This is why I call you in a crisis. Can you write it down so we don’t forget next time? Your ‘plug it with a penis’ line is getting on my nerves.”
“Oh, I can write it down for sure, but I’m still going to give you the plug it with a penis line. It’s a solid plan, really.”
I finally slid into a horizontal position and removed my stilettos before laying my head in her lap and pondering, “Why does it always have to be the assholes that do this to me? For once, just one time, can my vagina lust after someone who isn’t a douche yacht?”
She giggled again, “Douche yacht?”
“Yeah, you know,” I rolled my hand in the air in front of me in explanation, “A douche canoe, but bigger.”
“How the hell do you come up with this stuff, Holly?” She beamed a smile down at me and grew an extra head. I was staring up at two Rebeccas when I finally formed my slurred response.
“Just wine.”
I woke up the next morning still using her thigh as a pillow. Becks had slid down at some point in the night with one of my throw pillows and slept peacefully behind me.
I couldn’t stop myself from groaning as I sat up and waited for the world around me to stop swimming. There was an obnoxious ringing in my ears and my eyeballs felt dehydrated.
“You need to be quiet now,” Becks groaned, “it’s too early for all that noise.”
“I didn’t even—“ she held up a hand to silence me.
“Shh.”
I blinked a few times and squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the polished wood floors. I had never been so glad to have a day off in my life.
I climbed to my feet, using the couch as a crutch. The gentle squeak of the leather beneath my weight infuriated my slumbering best friend.
She lumbered grumpily to her feet and stomped across the room, “You’ll find me in your bed. Unless the building is on fire, leave me there.”
I considered following her for a moment. Spending an entire day horizontal with my eyes closed sounded like a fabulous plan. I gave in to the call of a glass of water instead. My body was begging to be rehydrated and I knew that if I laid down in my bed it would be another eight hours before I put any kind of non-alcoholic fluid inside me.
I downed the first glass in a single breath. When my stomach didn’t recoil to the point of expulsion, I filled a second and sipped at it as I headed for the driveway to retrieve my newspaper.
I said a quick prayer that my neighbors would still be asleep at bright-o’clock on a Sunday morning and dashed out for my weekly dose of the L. A. Times.
I dug my dead cell phone out of my purse and plugged it in before starting the coffee and settling in to read the paper.
I knew I didn’t have more than a couple hours of peace and quiet before Becks woke up and regaled me with every minute detail of my drunken wailings from the night before. I had every intention of savoring each silent moment of blissful peace I could squeeze out of it.
I also hoped that the quiet practice of reading the paper would chase away the lingering images of bare skin and hungry mouths that had haunted my wine-induced sleep.
Porter Hale was an infection and I needed to find a cure. Fast.
“What the fuck do I even say to her?” My head was pressed to my forearms and my eyes squeezed shut in an effort to keep out the glaring lights that seared like a laser beam into my brain, “Hey, Holly. It’s Porter. Sorry I trampled you like an elephant?”
“You’re really dramatic for a straight guy,” Preston’s voice was thick and groggy, but at least he was able to stand up and move around without dying, “Just call her and talk to her. It’s not like she’s going to climb through the phone and shank you with a sharpened toothbrush or something.”
“She might,” I griped, “I probably would if some dickhead plowed into me and spilled my drink then had the balls to call me the next day with some lame excuse.”
“First off,” Preston set his bottle of water down on the bar next to my head, “you shouldn’t be drinking while you’re getting plowed. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t end well. I almost chipped a tooth. Second, don’t give her a lame excuse. Tell her the truth. It’s not like Parker really deserves to have you make excuses for him. He’s an adult, Porter. He can deal with the consequences of getting coked out in front of dozens of people. Not your problem.”
Our mother’s words from the night before echoed through my brain and spurred a tiny worm of guilt for even considering outing his problem to a virtual stranger.
“I’ll figure something out,” I mumbled to the counter, “In the mean time, have you invested in a coffee pot yet? I’ve got a caffeine headache building on top of my hangover and I think my head might split open and spill my brains all over your bar if I don’t get some java in me soon.
”
“Tough break, bro. You’ll have to hit a Starbucks or something.”
It took everything I had not to fall to the floor and cry at the thought of leaving the house without coffee.
“Before you crawl out of here like a half-drunk cockroach in search of your glorious caffeine, did you happen to see where Parker ended up last night? I checked both of the spare rooms upstairs on my way down and he wasn’t in either of them. Did he take off with someone?”
I dug through the hazy memories from the night before and tried to remember where I had last seen him. He’d spent a good hour and a half stripping on his makeshift stage and then wandered off with half a dozen women hanging from him like jewelry.
“If I had to guess,” I lifted my head and cracked an eye at the youngest member of our trio, “I’d say he posted up in the guest house.”
“Ugh,” Porter groaned, “He better not have fucked up any of my furniture. If the room is covered in a fine layer of dust, I’m gonna have to kill him.”
I pushed myself to a standing position and waited for my precarious imbalance to pass before I spoke, “Want me to go out there with you?”
He eyed me warily, “You think you can make it?”
I thought about it for a moment before responding, “No, but I can crawl if I need to.”
The genuine smile that split Preston’s face was dazzling. All he had to do was smile and people fell in love with him. He just had one of those personalities that made you want to be around him. That smile was his moneymaker.
“Let’s get to it then!” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and, as much as I hate to admit it, I leaned into him to help steady myself against the almost-nautical sway of the room.
“I’m happy to help, Preston, but can we do this quietly? You hurt my head.”
By the time we made it to the back door, I was feeling a bit better and my brain had begun to clear. I ducked out from under his arm as we passed into the expanse of his back yard and we walked along the edge of his pool side-by-side.
“Why do you think he does it?” Preston asked quietly.
Porter (Dick Dynasty #1) Page 3
