by Carol Snow
“You took advantage of my daughter. And of our friendship.”
“I’m so sorry.” I think I get points for not saying, What friendship?
“Shavonne was extremely upset.”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“You know, Veronica, when I first told Paul about your situation and we talked about renting you the guesthouse at a below-market rate, he was concerned. He said, do we want to expose our own children to the effects of divorce? But in the end we decided that offering you the house was the Christian thing to do.”
Silent, I stared, my hands trembling.
“But now you’re running around like a teenager. Bringing one man home one night, staying out late with a different man another night.”
“I never brought a man home,” I said. “He was just giving me a ride.”
“It makes me wonder, you know, if we made the right decision offering you this house.”
The threat of homelessness renewed my humility. “I’m really very sorry, Deborah. I don’t know what else to say.”
She licked her lips. “You still owe Shavonne her money. You were gone for seven hours.”
I was only gone for six, but I paid for the extra hour without complaint.
My cell phone rang in the early afternoon, after Ben and I had shared a mostly silent lunch of peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I’d tried, I’m sorry. I’d tried, I love you more than anything . I’d asked, Did you have fun with Daddy? and What do you want to do today? All with no luck.
It was Jay.
“I just got a call from Haley’s publicist.”
“Okay.”
“There are some pictures of Haley and Brady. Taken last night. They’re already online.”
An image flashed through my mind: me straddling Brady in the front seat of his car. My entire body grew cold.
Jay said, “The pictures show Haley and Brady outside the Bar DeLux . . .”
Thank God!!!
“. . . which kind of surprised me since Haley was at her house last night. With me.”
“How cozy for you both.”
“Excuse me?”
“Brady asked me out. I said yes. If the press thought I was someone else, that’s their problem.”
“You don’t go to the Bar DeLux unless you want your picture taken.”
“Where were we supposed to go? Chili’s?”
“You can’t just run around pretending to be Haley whenever you feel like it!”
“I wasn’t pretending to be anybody! Brady likes me for myself. Is that so hard to believe?”
“From Brady? Yes.”
Only a couple of obscure gossip sites ran the pictures of Brady and me outside Bar DeLux. I should have been relieved; instead I felt disappointed. There were plenty of pictures of Brady and Haley—at restaurants, at parties, at the beach. I wanted more shots of Brady and me, even if we were the only ones who knew my true identity.
The day would have been a complete loss if not for the final phone call, which came in just as I was putting a frozen pizza into the toaster oven.
“I’m on my way to the airport,” Brady said, his voice muffled by traffic sounds. “But I needed to hear your voice before I left.”
I slipped into the bedroom so Brady wouldn’t hear Ben’s cartoon.
“I had a great time last night,” Brady said.
“Me, too.” I sat on the bed and pulled a pillow onto my lap. “Jay called.”
“Yeah, I talked to him. Such a tool.”
I laughed. Brady could see right through Jay. That’s why Jay didn’t like him.
“And I talked to my publicist,” Brady said. “Told her our situation. Well, not that you’ve been working for Jay—just that I met a girl who looks a lot like Haley and that people might get the wrong idea. She said we should wait till I get back to make any kind of comment to the press.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe we could even go away for a while. You know, head down to Mexico or maybe up to Santa Barbara.”
My heart raced—I mean, even more than it already was. “I’d love that!”
Of course, we’d have to plan it for a weekend when I didn’t have Ben—and I’d have to tell Brady I had a son. I should never have let things get this far without him knowing. As soon as there was a break in the conversation, I’d tell him. Would it change his feelings for me?
He sighed. “I miss you already.”
“I miss you, too.”
“And I’m not sure that my phone gets international service. So if you don’t hear from me, don’t think it means anything.”
“Okay.” I swallowed hard.
Brady said, “Oh! I also told my publicist what we talked about—you know, that you could be Haley’s registered double for parties and stuff. She can totally hook you up with the right people. When I get back, I’ll get the two of you together.”
“Great!”
“Don’t mention it to Jay, though. You know what he’s like.”
“A tool?”
He laughed. “Major.”
Chapter Twenty-three
On Monday morning, the news was everywhere at Las Palmas Elementary: Mrs. Largent, first-grade teacher and mother of two preteens, was pregnant.
Before the bell rang, I stopped by her classroom to offer my congratulations. “You must be excited.”
If I’d followed my life plan, I would have had two kids right now. Would I ever have another child?
Mrs. Largent yawned. Black circles sat underneath her weary eyes. “I will be. When the shock wears off and I start to feel better. But it’s hard enough to balance work and kids as it is. My husband and I talked, and we agreed that I should take a few years off.”
I missed the significance.
“So you might want to talk to Dr. Fisk,” she said. “About the job.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.”
How ironic: there was finally an opening at Las Palmas, and I no longer wanted it.
Ken’s car was parked on the same side of the street as mine, half a house away.
“Morning, Veronica!”
“Hey, Ken.”
He leaned down and whispered in my ear. “Or should I call you Haley?” He chuckled: a real laugh, not his usual Ha!
I forced a smile. “Have you seen her lately?”
He shook his head. “Not since a week ago Sunday. But we talk every night. And Pamela’s taking the boys this weekend. I was going to go camping, but I’d rather see Haley.” He shook his head in amazement. “Never thought you’d hear me say that, did you? Well!” He bounced up and down on his feet. “Enjoy your day! It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
It was damp and gray with a heavy fog that would take hours to burn off.
“It’s a morning,” I said.
When I got home, there was a message waiting from Dr. Fisk: “Good morning, Veronica. I don’t know if you’ve heard Mrs. Largent’s happy news, but we have an opening for a first-grade teacher. I can’t promise you anything, but I urge you to apply for the position.”
I erased the message.
Jay called a few hours later, just as I was scrolling through some celebrity gossip sites, disappointed that there were no new pictures of Brady and me.
“Hi, Jay. Is this about the pictures? Because I looked online, and they’re not that big a deal.”
Jay hadn’t hired me to be Haley for almost two weeks. Was he phasing me out, or would he fire me outright? Did it matter? The celebrity double job sounded like more fun, anyway.
“There’s a video,” he said.
“Really?” I clicked back to Google and did a quick video search on “Haley Rush Brady Ellis” and “Haley Bar DeLux.” Nothing.
“What’s the URL?” I asked.
“It hasn’t been posted yet.”
“Oh. Well, I know you’re annoyed that I went out with Brady without telling you, but none of the gossip magazines have even picked up the photos, so I doubt—”
“You’re h
aving sex.”
When I didn’t say anything, he added, “In a car.”
I said, “I didn’t think . . . I didn’t know . . .”
He exploded. “Do you understand what a sex tape will do to Haley’s career? Little girls idolize her! If this comes out, we can say good-bye to all of the licensing deals—the lunch boxes and hair accessories and Halloween costumes.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“How could you be so fucking stupid?”
“Don’t swear at me!”
“Don’t swear at you? Why? Because you’re so delicate? I just got done looking at a clip of you, buck naked, riding on top of that, that . . .” His voice broke.
My stomach clenched. “How much could you see of me?”
“Enough,” he said. “I saw enough.”
I felt nauseous. “Who showed it to you?”
“The asshole who took it sent it to Haley’s publicist—who is also an asshole, and who just spent twenty minutes telling me I was a fucking moron for letting this happen. He said he was giving Haley first dibs on buying it. For a million bucks. She said no.”
“Haley knows about it?”
“Not exactly. No. But she doesn’t have a million bucks to spare. So now he’s off to sell it to the highest bidder. It’ll hit the Internet in a day or two.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I thought you were different from Haley.”
“I am different!”
“True. At least she can sing.”
There was only one person I wanted to talk to—who I needed to talk to.
“Brady? It’s me. Veronica. I don’t know if you can even retrieve your messages from Australia, but I had to let you know what’s going on. There’s this tape. Of us. When we were in . . . the car. Jay’s really upset—you know, about what it could do to Haley’s career. And yours, too, of course. He didn’t actually say that, but I’m sure he’s concerned. I just thought you should know.”
He called back within the hour.
“Veronica?”
“Brady! You got my message?”
“Yeah, my messages came through somehow, all in a bunch. One of the cameramen let me borrow his phone to call you back. Anyway . . . wow.”
“Yeah, wow.”
“I feel really bad that I put you in this position.”
“Actually, I liked being in that position.” I was so, so happy that he had called me back.
It was quiet for a moment, and then he laughed. “You are so awesome.”
Suddenly, I was hardly even upset anymore. “Jay was pissed.”
“Jay’s an asshole.”
“Haley doesn’t even know yet. I feel bad for her—especially since it’s not her fault.”
“Don’t.” He sighed. “Haley’s spent the last year doing everything she can to sink her career. I think she just wants out. Seriously. So maybe this will give her the excuse she needed.”
“But she might still have feelings for you,” I said.
“She doesn’t. Trust me. What she really needs is a regular guy.”
Once again, I envisioned Haley in Ken’s little ranch house, standing over the GE range, cooking macaroni and cheese for the boys.
He said, “What really bugs me is that now people are going to think Haley and I are back together. I can’t exactly say, like, this is my new girl and me on our first date. So, we’re just going to have to lay low a little longer.”
Brady called me his girl! His girl!
But he was right. If we took our romance public too soon, everyone would know it was me in that tape. I couldn’t do that to Ben. I couldn’t do it to myself, either. I’d never live down the embarrassment.
“Well, it’s not hard to lay low when you’re halfway around the world,” I said. “How’s the filming going?”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Kind of slow. Plus, it’s hard to concentrate when all I can think about is you.”
Oh. My. God.
“I’d better run,” he said—before I could decide whether or not to admit that he was all I could think about, too. “Don’t want to run up this guy’s phone bill.”
“I miss you,” I said.
“I miss you, too.”
I still hadn’t told him about Ben.
Chapter Twenty-four
The Haley Rush sex tape—soon to be known as the “Haley Rush Has a Fat Ass” tape—turned up on an online muck-raking site on Tuesday.
Betwixt Channel star Haley Rush was caught in a compromising position Saturday night in the parking lot outside an all-night donut shop. Her companion is believed to be television costar Brady Elliston . . .
At least they got Brady’s last name wrong. Maybe that would save him from some Google searches. Really, it wasn’t so bad for him: his face was so shadowed, he was hardly even recognizable. And anyway, you couldn’t really see much of him beyond his side and arms.
That’s because I was blocking him. There I was, white ass bumping up against the dashboard as I climbed into position. I looked hideous: pale (I was way overdue for another spray tan), ungainly (there really hadn’t been much room to maneuver), and, well, fat. In addition to what one commenter called my “bread-dough butt,” the video offered glimpses of my post-childbirth tummy and my “gravity’s winning” thighs. More than one person suggested that I—that is, Haley—had made a visit to the donut shop before tearing off my clothes.
The video was only a few minutes long, and it wasn’t great quality, but it was clearer than I would have guessed, considering that I hadn’t heard anyone drive up. The peeping Tom must have followed us from the club, parked on the street and crept around the cars. He even got a couple of shots of my face. My expression was . . . unfortunate.
By Wednesday, the trashier entertainment programs—which I was able to watch thanks to the miracle of the Internet—had it covered.
Tween idol Haley Rush has gotten herself into a bit of an awkward position! We can’t show you the full tape here, but . . .
There was my facial expression again, along with a couple of black rectangles superimposed over my naughty bits.
By Thursday, it was everywhere.
A Good Role Model Is Hard to Find . . .
No word yet on how this will affect her future at the Betwixt Channel . . .
Haley appears to have put on some weight in recent days . . .
Jay didn’t call me. Neither did Brady. When I saw Ken from a distance at school, I hurried the other way.
To add to the fun, Ben went into full mope mode.
“I’m sorry about Friday night.”
Shrug.
“Are you ever going to forgive me?”
Shrug.
“I love you.”
Shrug.
When I dropped him off at his classroom Wednesday morning, I tried to kiss him, but he wouldn’t let me.
“Dad’ll pick you up after school today,” I told him. “I’ll see you after dinner Sunday.” When I’d been subbing, the off weekends weren’t so bad because I’d see Ben at school on Thursdays and Fridays. However, I’d turned down so many assignments that the school had stopped calling me.
I ran a hand over his blond hair, which was a bit too long and therefore less spiky than usual. “I could come to school for lunch tomorrow. Or Friday. Or both?”
He shook his head.
“I could bring Jack in the Box.” There was no way he could resist that.
But he did.
“Okay, then.” I swallowed hard. “Have fun.”
The Ben-less days that followed went something like this: Sleep late. Drink too much coffee. Eat cookies. Lie in bed and stare at ceiling. Check Internet. Mourn the injustices of the world. Shower until the water runs cold. Pinch naked flab and resolve to monitor food intake. Check dark roots in the mirror and wonder how the extensions would react to Clairol. Imagine a future with Brady. Worry about his reaction to Ben. Eat chips dipped in artificial cheese. Look at Ben’s baby pictures. Cry.
Sunda
y night, I was on time to pick Ben up from Hank and Darcy’s house. In fact, the whole next week, I was on time for everything. When Shaun and Shavonne dawdled over their Fruity Pebbles Monday morning, I announced that my van would pull out of the driveway at eight-twenty, with or without them. They made it into the car that day and Tuesday, too, but Wednesday morning I left them in the dust. Well, okay: in the bathroom. So what if Deborah kicked us out? That might be just the push I needed to get on with my life—whatever that life might be.
If only Brady would call—or even text. I could ask him more about the celebrity doubles agencies. I could get his e-mail address. Just because we couldn’t talk didn’t mean we couldn’t write.
Was he watching our videos from Australia? It was amazing how much the press reports had focused on Haley and what this meant for her future and how little trouble they’d given Brady: just the double standard, I guessed.
Saturday morning, I made Ben’s favorite pancakes (banana blueberry) and tried to engage him in conversation.
ME: If you could be any animal in the world, what would you be?
BEN: Can I watch a DVD?
ME: Not now, honey. We’re having a conversation.
My cell phone rang: Jay. Why was he calling? What could he possibly say, other than, In case I wasn’t clear the last time we spoke, you’re a tramp and an idiot and you’ve ruined Haley’s career.
Instead, he said, “Haley’s missing.”
Of course she was. This time, however, no one could blame her.
“What did Rodrigo say?” I asked.
“I fired Rodrigo on Monday. Turns out he hadn’t worked at least half the hours that he said he did.”
“Oh. Yeah. Haley told me about that.”
