Table of Contents
Legal Page
Title Page
Book Description
Dedication
Trademarks Acknowledgement
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
New Excerpt
About the Author
Publisher Page
About You
ISBN # 978-1-78651-511-7
©Copyright A.J. Llewellyn 2016
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright November 2016
Edited by Sarah Smeaton
Pride Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Pride Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Pride Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2016 by Pride Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN
Pride Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.
ABOUT YOU
A.J. Llewellyn
The psychic predicted Ky would meet his one and only. What in the world does he do with two guys who both match her description?
Ky Maxwell is desperate for work. When his cushy studio PR job disappears, his former boss takes pity on him, referring him to an independent movie company going into production with a huge sci-fi trilogy.
Ky’s excited until Lisa, his prospective employer, insists on doing an astrological chart of Ky as part of the interview, along with a psychic reading. His crazy maybe-boss predicts a new man coming into Ky’s life. She goes into great detail. He’s a fire sign, probably a Leo, his first name starts with a T, he’s in his early 30s. And…he’s the one!
Ky couldn’t be less interested. He needs work. Love won’t pay the bills. He doesn’t get the job because Lisa believes their stars are out of alignment. Really? The reading is proving to be frighteningly accurate. Since he’s cut off from her, though, he has no idea which of the two wonderful new guys he meets is his forever man. How can he choose? Or will they, too, soon vanish as fast as Ky’s last paycheck?
Dedication
To my best friend, Venus Aphrodite, my faithful companion for fifteen years. Each day I had with you was a gift. To quote Flavia Wheedon, “If I could sit across the porch from God, I’d thank him for lending me you.” xoxo
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Aeromexico: Grupo Aeromexico
ASPCA: The American Society For the Prevention of Cruelty To Animals
Avid: Avid Identification Systems Inc.
Band-Aid: Johnson & Johnson Corporation
Botox: Allergan, Inc.
Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola Company
Criminal Minds: CBS Corporation
Baywatch: RTL Group S.A.
Donald Duck: Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Facebook: Facebook, Inc.
Funny or Die: Funny or Die Inc.
Grand Marnier: Société des Produits Marnier-Lapostolle Corporation
Hawaii Five-0: CBS Studios Inc.
Heath: Huhtamaki Finance BV
iPad: Apple Inc.
iPhone: Apple Inc.
iPod: Apple Inc.
Jaguar: Jaguar Land Rover Limited
JetBlue: JetBlue Airways Corporation
Lord of the Rings: J.R.R Tolkien. The Saul Zaentz Company DBA Tolkien Enterprises
McDonald’s: McDonald’s Corporation
Mini Cooper: Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft Corporation
Naked Kombat: CyberNet Entertainment LLC
Paramount Pictures: Paramount Pictures Corporation
Rosetta Stone: Rosetta Stone Ltd Corporation
Skype: Microsoft Corporation / Skype Technologies SA Corporation
Starbucks: Starbucks Corporation dba Starbucks Coffee Company
Subway: Doctor’s Associates Inc.
Taser: TASER International Inc.
Technicolor: Technicolor Trademark Management Corporation
Instagram: Facebook, Inc.
Snapchat: Snapchat, Inc.
Twitter: Twitter, Inc.
Universal Studios: Universal City Studios LLC
YouTube: Alphabet Inc.
Hawaii Five-O: CBS Corporation
The Counter: Custom Built Gourmet Burgers
Lego: The Lego Group
Google: Alphabet Inc.
Café La Especial: Café La Especial
Tacos El Chiapas: Tacos El Chiapas
Vendome Liquors: Vendome Wines & Spirits
Tiki-Ti: Tiki-Ti
Disneyland: The Walt Disney Company
Chapter One
I had never been fired before in my whole life. I sat there in Frick’s office… Or was it Frack? I could never keep those guys straight because I hadn’t had the job very long. And they were identical twins. Personally, I thought they should have worn nametags. Somebody told me I could tell them apart by their teeth, but that was by the by. Two weeks I’d been working for them, to be precise, but now we had to say farewell.
I listened in disbelief as he said, “We have to let you go.”
“Yes,” Frack echoed. Or was it Frick? “We have to let you go.”
“You’re too expensive.”
“Yes, you’re too expensive.”
I wondered, as they kept blathering, how many other people in Hollywood had been fired by a Greek chorus?
“It has nothing to do with your job performance. It’s necessary cutbacks. Our bottom line.”
“Yes. Our bottom line.”
“And…unfortunately, our last movie tanked.”
Frack—or maybe it was Frick—didn’t echo the last sentiment. Studio executives hated to admit failure. I already knew the movie had tanked. That’s why they’d hired me, Ky Maxwell, to whip up a groundswell of PR about their new movie. Then they’d gone and fired their Executive Creative Director. I’d had a bad feeling that his job loss would also mean mine. It was the way these things went in Hollywood. Any baby the ECD had hired went out with the bathwater too.
I was really sorry now that I hadn’t listened to all my friends who had told me it was career suicide to leave a big, cushy job at Paramount Pictures for a small company like Lunchbox Productions.
“How many times did you open your lunchbox as a kid and find you had lousy sandwiches?” one of my friends had asked.
I felt just like the guy on JetBlue who opened the emergency exit and jumped off the plane, except that I was being pushed, and unlike him, I didn’t even have time to grab a couple of beers on my way down.
Frick and Frack didn’t shake my hand. They didn’t believe in bodily contact at Lunchbox Productions. Germs, you know. I wished now I’d contracted a galloping case of strep throat to breathe all over them. They pointed to the door, together, as if I had no idea where the damned thing was.
Lucy, the woman from Human Resources, was waiting for me out
side what had been my office up until ten minutes ago. I was still in shock. I’d thought Frick and Frack were calling me in to discuss our weekly strategy meeting before marshaling the troops. I’d had no idea they’d been about to shove their boots up my ass.
“You can’t go in there,” Lucy said, barring entry into my office in a dramatic way.
“But my things are in there,” I said. I could see my iPad, iPhone, and iPod in its soundstage dock. These were my personal possessions. I wasn’t going anywhere without them.
She looked askance. She obviously hadn’t expected me to react and she instantly called security on her cell phone, as though I were a dangerous lunatic about to go postal on her. Frick and Frack hid in their offices as security arrived. One of the two armed guards kept his hand on his Taser. I suspected he was itching to use it. I remained calm as he escorted me into the office so I could remove my things.
Lucy scurried in with a form for me to sign. “Would you like an exit interview?” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oops, sorry,” she said when she removed it. “That’s only for people who resign.” She gave me a pleading glance. “Please don’t tell them I screwed up.”
“I won’t.”
She gave me a shaky smile and dangled my paycheck like a carrot. I had to sign the waiver exempting the company from any future lawsuit in exchange for getting two weeks’ severance. I signed Donald Duck, not that she noticed. I took the check out of her hand. She was too busy staring at the security guard, who was, by anyone’s standards, a handsome guy. We’d dated a couple of times the week I’d started work. Joe’s addiction to steroids and lengthy gym sessions, and my addiction to long hours of work, had kinda killed things for us.
I’d liked Joe, but my less than enthusiastic response to evenings spent doing stomach crunches had wrecked any chance of a romance. I thought he was still pissed that I’d stopped returning his calls. He stared at me, his thumb caressing the Taser on his tool belt.
Time to boogie.
He waited patiently for me to cram my last Heath bar into my briefcase from my chocolate stash in the top drawer.
“You and candy.” He shook his head.
Lucy acted surprised. She glanced at me. I shrugged my shoulders. Let her think…and wonder.
Joe and his partner escorted me outside. They were both so bulked up they could hardly put their arms down to their sides. I felt like a criminal. As I left my office, I peered over my shoulder and discovered that my replacement was already moving into my nice, two-week-old swivel chair. I wasn’t surprised to see that it was my assistant, Alessa Thompson. I had brought her with me from Paramount.
Et tu, Brute?
I felt bruised more by her shoe joining the others up my ass than losing the job itself. Now I understood why she’d been sniffing around my desk the past couple of days. She’d been trying to figure out what I was up to. I’d been in the midst of organizing a massive marketing campaign with McDonald’s. Without my contacts, she wouldn’t know where to begin. I’d only ever given her limited access to my stellar list of go-to people. I had password-protected my phone, but my iPad was still too new for me to have programmed much into it.
Outside in the parking lot of Universal Studios, where small production companies came and went like take-out meals, I handed Joe my parking pass as I stuffed my belongings into the trunk of my treasured Mini Cooper. I loved that damned car, but it had scared me since the day I’d bought it. It was so tiny and with all the idiots driving massive SUVs in LA, I was always petrified some goofball would steamroll right over me.
Who knew the steamroller would be two humans who couldn’t rub a couple of brain cells together?
Alessa. God! Alessa was not only my assistant, but one of my best friends. This would sure cast a pall on all those weekend brunches. They’d hired her, not because she was better than me, but because she was cheap. And as I always liked to say, you get what you pay for.
Joe took the parking pass from me, examining it carefully between his thumb and forefinger, holding it up to the sun, squinting as though I might have had time between getting sacked and being escorted from the premises to create a dummy duplicate. Nope. The only dummy duplicates on the lot were Frick and Frack.
“Sorry it didn’t work out,” he said.
“Yeah, me too.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking about our dating life or my job, but felt that my response covered all the bases. I sat behind the wheel for a moment. Where did a guy like me, whose whole life had been work, work, work, go when he suddenly found himself…unemployed?
I drove off the lot, incredulous as I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that Joe was still standing there in a half-crouched position—hand on his Taser, ready to strike. I thought about giving him a finger wave, or maybe backing up and knocking him down, but in my brief experience with him, he didn’t strike me as being the type with a sense of humor—especially when he had murder on his mind.
A surge of sadness engulfed me as I sailed past the buildings that had become a big part of my daily life. I’d dreamed of Hollywood success from the time I was a little kid. I loved studio lots. I belonged on them. What the heck would I do now?
At the Technicolor gate, I waited for the lights to change. It cheered me up to no end when I realized that sacking me had been a Band-Aid on a major arterial bleed. Frick and Frack were panicking. They were in deep trouble and would no doubt be out of a job themselves by the end of the next financial quarter.
Lunchbox Productions had turned out two turkeys in a row and before I’d even joined them, the studio had been rejecting every screenplay they wanted to produce. Now their latest project, an animated feature, had lost its director, and its key marketing platform, thanks to giving me the chop. They’d made a colossal mistake.
I moved forward as the lights turned green. I waved goodbye to the guy in the security booth. He was too busy texting with one hand and picking his nose with the other to pay me any attention, but I waved anyway. I wanted it to matter that Ky Maxwell was on his way out. Over and out. Done. Done like a dinner.
When I was working, I made constant lists all day long of what I would do if I had free time. My lists usually included drives up the coast, walking on the beach, spas, saunas, long lunches with old friends… Now that I had all this free time on my hands, I didn’t want to do any of those things.
I drove south of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, to my apartment on the corner of Maxwell and Laurel Canyon. It had tickled me from day one that my name was Maxwell and I lived on Maxwell. Now that it was the morning for weekly street cleaning and there was no parking to be found for half a mile, I wasn’t enjoying it so much. Being at work all day, I’d missed all this fun. I parked several blocks away, read the complicated and conflicting street signs, took a deep breath and hoped I’d parked legally. I unpacked my truck and stomped off home with my belongings.
My apartment was half of a small bungalow. There were two—one in the back of the property, the other in front. I was in the front half and it was both a blessing and a curse. I got plenty of sun, but also plenty of intrusive property developers who dropped by daily, wondering if I wanted to sell my place so they could bulldoze it in favor of some hideous ‘multi-family dwelling’, as they liked to call it.
I dropped my stuff inside the door, and my golden retriever, Phantom, came running to greet me. He was the world’s sweetest dog—and the hairiest, too. In spite of frequent grooming, he left a wad of blond fur wherever he went. I could tell every place he’d been. For example, I could tell he’d slept on multiple spots on the sofa, his bed, a couple of chairs, and if I checked the bedroom, I was certain I’d see fur there, as well.
His dog walker, Tammy, was a nice enough lady, but she didn’t seem to do much with him. I paid her to walk him each afternoon, but he was always anxious to pee when I arrived home. I checked my watch. Too early for her now. I leashed my best friend and walked him down the street. We didn’t get very far since Phantom was too busy stopping to
sniff and squirt each and every blade of grass. We were just in time to see my car being towed right past us.
I flagged down the tow truck driver, who wasn’t going to release my vehicle at first, until he saw I had a cell phone and was about to dial nine-one-one.
He finally relented, dropped the vehicle, and charged me a whopping two hundred dollars. He had tried to tack on impound fees of another hundred but had no choice but to scratch those.
With my car now resting in a truly illegal spot, I had no choice but to jump in and drive. Phantom thought it was Christmas and stuck his head out of the window. I called around to a few friends and discovered that my best friend, Angus, was at the Mulholland dog park with his dogs, Zoe and Justice.
Phantom thought it was a cool idea to head on down there and we did. I quite liked the speed with which Laurel Canyon moved. I was used to choking, bumper-to-bumper, peak hour traffic. I would have relaxed, except that I remembered bad things happened in threes. So far, I’d lost my job, gotten my car towed, and God knew what would happen next.
We found parking in the small, cemented lot at the dog park. Phantom’s ass swayed in my face as he bent down, looking for tennis balls under the passenger seat. His head popped back up. He’d found a treasure, now firmly embedded between his teeth. Phantom was the nicest dog in the world until you tried to separate him from a ball. Then he would growl and snap and bark. Oops…and bite.
I parked and opened the gate from the parking lot to the enclosed stretch of green that had been designated as off-leash fun for dogs. Nestled in the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains, the small strip of park was a gift from the city. It operated from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon. After that, the city’s animal control units enforced closure. Being part of the wild was great fun, until late afternoon when coyotes started coming down from the mountains hunting for food. The inspectors made sure you and your dog were nowhere near the park by then. A dog running around was like ringing a dinner bell and the city did not want to deal with lawsuits.
About You Page 1
