by Brandy Blake
Lisa frowned and reached out to Valerie, patting her hand sympathetically. “I’m so sorry, Val. If there’s anything at all that I can do, please tell me.”
Valerie looked at her earnestly. “Well, I am going to go over to her place soon and do some long overdue yard work and paint her house. The place is really looking run down and she needs help. She used to keep it all up herself; the yard, anyway. My grandpa was the last one to paint the house and he’s been gone ten years. The house is really in need of some new paint. Think you’d be up for something like that?”
Lisa nodded. “Definitely! Just let me know when, and I’ll do it. I’d be glad to help. You’re grandma has always been so good to me. I just can’t believe that she has to go through this. It’s awful. I hope she heals from it all soon.”
“Me, too. In the meantime, I’m trying to get as much extra work as I can to take over her bills while she’s not working so that everything stays afloat. That’s been tougher than I thought that it would be.” Valerie frowned slightly.
Lisa looked at her curiously. “Did you do that… project… that Al Oliver asked you to do? I know you were thinking about it. Did you actually do it?”
Her cheeks warming the instant that her best friend brought it up, Valerie looked down into her tea and a wide smile spread over her face. She didn’t even have a chance to answer before Lisa gasped and giggled at her.
“Ohhhhh! You did! Look at you! My goodness. So tell me all about it! What happened? Where did you go?” Lisa leaned forward, pressing for all of the details.
Valerie looked up and grinned like a high school girl with a crush. “Well, I called Al and said that I would do it. I couldn’t think of any other way to get new jobs and make the money that Grandma needs. So… I call Al up and told him yes. He rented the most unbelievable penthouse suite I’ve ever seen, and I met him and Tristan there. There was a camera crew of three people.
“My god, I was so nervous. Tristan was, too. We were sitting together out in the living room waiting for the camera crew to get ready, and we started drinking champagne. Thank god for that. I was a nervous wreck when I first got there, but after a few drinks in each of us, we kind of talked it out. We agreed that it was just work. It was just a one-time thing, and when we were done, that would be it. So, we went in thinking ‘work’.”
Lisa was staring at her wide eyed. “So? Was it work? What was it like? I can’t believe you had sex in front of a camera crew. I don’t think that I could ever do that.”
“Well… when I went in the bedroom, it was really different than what I expected. I guess it felt like it would be really… mechanical, like it would just happen and we wouldn’t feel anything, and it would be done and that would be that. I guess I thought it would be like that because I wanted it to be like that,” she said with a voice filled with residual wonder.
“It wasn’t? What was it like then?” Lisa pushed impatiently.
Valerie let out a long, slow sigh as she smiled and her cheeks warmed even more. “Oh, girl.” She hesitated and shook her head. “Oh my god. That man… whew… what a lover. I wasn’t expecting him to be so hot at all. I’ve never had such good sex in my life. He was incredible.”
She giggled then and held her hand up to her mouth, looking around herself surreptitiously. “I can’t stop thinking about it! I thought it was just going to happen and then go away and be in the past and that would be that. Oh no… I can’t get it out of my head! He was…. just… amazing. It’s never been like that.”
Lisa’s whole frame sagged downward as she grinned and a dreamy look came over her face. “I knew it. I knew he would be amazing. Did you see him in ‘Going After the Girl’? He did this love scene… oh! Hot. So hot. I knew it was going to be like that with you. He’s such a great actor! Totally believable!”
Valerie’s heart skipped a beat as Lisa’s words sank in. Tristan was a good actor. Totally believable. Of course it had been a great love scene. It was just a scene to him. It was nothing more than work, which is exactly what they had agreed on before they went in the room. He wasn’t still thinking about her or what happened between them. He wasn’t swooning over how incredible it felt to be with her. He was acting. She suddenly felt awash in foolishness.
Clearing her throat, Valerie lifted her chin. “Yeah, well, that’s all it was. Just acting.”
She wished that it hadn’t felt real to her. She wished with everything in her that he hadn’t affected her so much. Valerie promised herself that she wasn’t going to think of it anymore, and that she was going to focus on her work and her grandmother and not let herself have any more errant thoughts about the hot lover she had lost herself in.
“So… is anything going to happen for you two?” Lisa asked with a naughty eyebrow waggle.
Valerie narrowed her eyes. “Well, yes and no. See, he and I agreed that it was just business, and we both said that we were done and we weren’t going to even see each other ever again, but then after it was over we both went back out to the living room and Al told us that he wants us to go out on a few dates and be ‘caught in the public eye’ because he said it will make us more interesting to the public.
“He wants us to be the new hot couple in Hollywood so that the public will become fascinated with us. I wish it could be just about any other way, but that’s how it is. There’s no way around that. So, we said we’d go out on a few dates over the next couple of weeks, but that’s it. Then we’re done. I just hope something good comes of that video. I’d hate to have made it for nothing. You know that once it’s out on the Internet, there’s no taking it back.”
Lisa nodded. “Oh, I know what you mean, and Val, honey… it’s already out. I’m not going to watch it; I don’t ever want to see you that way, but I do know that it’s out. So, good luck with it. As far as the dating goes, don’t feel bad about that. It’s not going to suck being out on a date with a hot, sweet guy like Tristan Dane. There are a lot of women who wish they were in your shoes. Trust me. Don’t blow that off. Enjoy it. He’ll probably be the best date that you’ve had in a long time.”
A small laugh bubbled up in Valerie. “Yeah, you’re right. He probably will be the best date I’ve had in a long time. I guess I should just try to enjoy it. Keep my heart out of it and just have fun, right? I can do that. Go have a good time with him and hope for the best. Maybe get some good work out of it, if things turn out alright.”
“That’s exactly the right way to look at it,” Lisa said with a grin and a wink.
Valerie smiled at her. “Thank you so much for always keeping me on track.”
“Hey, what are best friends for?” she asked without looking for an answer.
***
Two days later, Valerie was at her grandmother’s house in the backyard digging up weeds when her cell phone rang. She took her gloves off and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, seeing that it was Lisa who was calling her.
She smiled and wiped her arm over her brow, taking some hard earned sweat off of her skin as she did so. She slid her finger over the face of the phone and put it up to her ear.
“Hello?” she asked, glad for the break.
“Are you sitting down?” Lisa asked as if she was breaking the biggest news story ever to Valerie.
Valerie blinked and looked around her for a second. “I’m on my knees in my grandma’s back yard. I’m pulling weeds.”
“Girl… did you hear yet?” Lisa asked as if she was announcing Miss Universe.
“Hear what? What are you talking about?” Valerie knitted her brow impatiently.
“Your sex video… it’s gone viral. Everyone is watching it. Everyone is sharing it.” Lisa spoke in a low serious tone.
“What? What everyone?” Valerie asked as her heart began to race.
“Ev. Ry. One. As in global trend. All the social media. All the countries. All the people. Everyone. You and Tristan are the hottest couple since Brad and Angie. The women want him and the men want you, and no one is being shy about it.
There are fan pages going up all over the Internet. Heck, I got friend requests from over forty people pretending to be you. I clipped all of their wings. You haven’t seen it?” Lisa asked in quiet amazement.
“Seen it? No. No, I haven’t seen it.”
Valerie tried to breathe, but her breath wasn’t coming. It suddenly felt as if everything in her had come to a halt without warning.
“You better wear your sunglasses and a hat and tint the windows on your car, girl, because you’re not going to be able to go to the grocery store without people going after you. I still haven’t watched it, and I’m not going to, like I said, but it seems like everyone else on the planet is watching it.” Lisa sounded more serious than Valerie had ever heard her.
“What are they saying? Is there… is there a positive response?” Valerie asked with her heart in her throat as a pit formed in her stomach. She had begun to wonder if she ever should have taken the chance and done it at all.
“Mostly it’s positive, but there’s some negative out there. It’s still a little too early to tell. All I know right now is that you and Tristan are the hottest thing on the Internet right now. Like… hot as the sun hot, and I figured that you probably didn’t know. Go look it up when we get off this call.” Lisa told her with a soft challenge in her voice.
“I will. Thanks for letting me know,” Valerie said in an even tone.
“You got it, sister. Good luck,” Lisa replied, and then she said goodbye and Valerie ended the call.
She stared at her phone in her hand then, wondering if she should look. Trying to find the courage. The tip of her finger hovered over the buttons on her phone. All the social media images, just a click away. She went to the Internet first and did a Google search.
She began to type her name into the little box as the indicator blinked, waiting for her. She got three letters into her name, and the search engine automatically populated ‘Valerie Martin and Tristan Dane sex tape’.
She gasped and closed out the Internet app. It was there. It was right there, staring her in the face. It had been leaked just a few days before, and already it had gone viral. She put her phone back in her pocket, her heart pounding hard.
She suddenly didn’t want to know what anyone was saying or thinking. She didn’t want to know what might happen if she should get online. She didn’t want to see her social media page. She just wanted to stay at her grandmother’s house and never walk out into the world again.
Chapter6
Valerie’s phone rang as she was sitting in her kitchen eating breakfast the next morning, and she turned her phone over and saw that it was Al Oliver. She hadn’t let herself look at her phone or anything on the Internet since she had checked Google the day before after her call with Lisa.
“Good morning, Al,” she said in a quiet voice. There seemed to be a tremor of nerves deep inside of her that hadn’t stopped rippling since she had shut her phone off the day before.
He sounded jovial; more so than she had ever heard from him before. “Good morning to you, too! Have you seen what’s going on out there? Have you? It’s incredible! It’s going even better than I thought it would.”
She took a deep breath and laid her palm on the table before her, almost in a steadying way. “I didn’t really look. To be honest, I’m a little nervous about it.”
“Well, don’t be nervous; it’s what we were trying to do. It’s what we wanted. It’s happening. Valerie, your career is about to shoot through the roof. That’s why I’m calling you. We have to strike while this is hot, and it could not possibly be any hotter than it is right now.” Al sounded as excited as a child on Christmas morning.
“What do you mean, strike? What are you talking about? I’m not making another tape, Al.”
She furrowed her brow slightly in worry. She had loved the feeling and the experience of being with Tristan, and she hadn’t expected it to be that way, but she wasn’t about to do it ever again. She was having a hard enough time getting over the first intimate interaction between the two of them. She was already reminding herself over and over again that it was just business. She didn’t want to complicate matters in her head or heart any more than they already were.
“By strike I mean date. You and Tristan need to go out on a date. The public needs a teasing taste of you. They’re all hungry for you right now… pandering after you. You have to make them want you more. Think fever pitch. Now, listen carefully to me. I have this all planned out…” He paused a moment and she knew he was setting up the scenario for her as a presentation so she’d do it.
She pursed her lips and listened to him, feeling uncertainty knotting in her belly.
“So you and Tristan go out tomorrow night. I’ll send a stretch limousine around for you, you’ll both be picked up. You dress to the nines. I’m sure you’ve got that handled. You’ll have reservations at a little Italian place downtown… somewhere intimate… secluded and small. Somewhere that makes it look like you two are trying to lay low.
“Then, after you’ve had dinner, the media will be alerted as to where you two are. When you leave the restaurant, there will be a throng of fans screaming for you, and media all around flashing cameras at you. You act surprised, like you just got caught with your hand in the cookie jar. You two make it look like you’re rushing to get to the limo, but take your time about it.
“You want the cameras to be able to get really good shots of the two of you. Think of it as a couple’s photo shoot. In fact, you should be holding hands and be very close to each other when you walk out of the restaurant door. Really look like you’re in love and you two are so into each other that you’re almost oblivious to the rest of the world.” He sounded almost gleeful about it.
Valerie sighed deeply. She thought back to when they were together in bed in the hotel room, and from the first time he touched her face there at the end of the bed, from the first time that his lips pressed against hers, she forgot that anyone else was around them. The whole time they were intimate with each other, neither one of them had thought even once about the other people in the room or the camera, or anything else outside of just the two of them.
She knew as she was listening to Al that it would be the easiest thing in the world to be wrapped up in being with Tristan, and forget that anyone else was around. She just had to make sure that she remembered that it was just for work, and not let her imagination take her away with any schoolgirl fantasies.
“We can do that,” she answered Al. “Should one of us call Tristan and tell him? Does he know yet?” she asked, wondering what he thought of all of the madness surrounding their supposed scandal.
“Yeah, he knows. I just got off of the phone with him. He’ll be in a tux. He’s ready for this. Just make sure you do it right,” Al instructed seriously.
“I understand Al. We’ll do it right.” She ran the tip of her finger over a design in the table top, tracing it as she thought about something that had been lingering at the back of her mind. “Al?”
“Yeah?”
“How much more time am I going to need to spend with Tristan before it’s done? I mean… I am kind of looking forward to getting back to my normal life; one where I’m not doing anything with Tristan. When is that going to happen?” she asked in quiet voice. Simplicity sounded like the best thing in the world to her.
“Val, that’s never going to happen… at least the normal part. Your life is never going to be normal again. People know who you are now. You’re not going to ever be able to go back to anything that you knew before. This is a whole new life for you, and it’s only going to keep going forward. That was the intention of this all along, and you knew it.
“You’re a big, big star now. As far as Tristan goes, well… we’ll just have to see how it all pans out. We want to keep people interested, and we’re going to have to weigh the scales on it every day and see how it’s going and make decisions as we go along. I can’t give you a timeline on that.” He sounded genuine, and she knew that he was being hon
est with her.
“Alright. I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes. Thanks, Al,” she told him solemnly.
They ended their call and she sat back in the chair and wondered just what it really was that she had gotten herself into, and whether it really was the right thing to do.
She didn’t have any modeling jobs that day or the next, so she only left her house long enough to go see her grandmother and take care of her. She was careful to be as discreet as she could, but even so, she was sure that she saw more traffic on both her street and her grandmother’s street that day; people driving past slowly, looking around. She wondered if she was losing it or if it was really happening. She hoped that it was nothing more than paranoia on her part.
