The Girlfriend Stage

by Janci Patterson

  Have you seen this? it says, followed by a link.

  I’m pretty certain what the link leads to. Instead of clicking, I call him. “Hey,” I say when he answers. “You guys have seen the video?”

  “Yeah,” Ben says. “Wyatt found it. Someone posted it to the forums.”

  “Do you know how many people have viewed it?”

  “Um,” Ben says, “how many people do you think want to see Anna-Marie Halsey naked?”

  “Shit. How bad is it?”

  “You haven’t seen it?”

  “Not yet.” I’m hoping I won’t have to. I really don’t love the idea of seeing her with Shane. “And I’m not super thrilled to have to crawl the internet looking at everything people are saying about her, but as of this morning it’s my job to know.”

  Ben pauses for a second. “You signed her?”

  “I did. And I told her I’m in love with her, and she said it back.” I close my eyes, remembering what it had felt like to hear her say those words. She loves me. I’d had no idea how much I’d needed to hear that until I did.

  “No shit,” he says. “Really? Wyatt, they’re in love.”

  I hear squealing, and damn it, I want to join in. “Look, have Wyatt send me the link to the forum post. And if he wants to keep an eye on where else it gets posted and how many views it’s getting—”

  “Oh, say no more. Wyatt’s already on it.”

  I cringe. “How’s the reaction?”

  “Wyatt says it’s about how you’d expect. Some say good for her, a lot of wow she’s hot, an unhealthy dose of slut-shaming.”

  I nod. That is what I expected. “So nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “No,” Ben says. “How’s she taking it?”

  “We just found out about it. Not well.”

  “Damn. Shane is—”

  “Her boyfriend from high school,” I say.

  “Yeah, I know. Dude. He’s good looking with his clothes on, but without them, he’s—”

  I groan, and on the other end I hear Ben fending off Wyatt as he smacks Ben for saying that. Which I appreciate. I really don’t want to hear how sexy Shane is, any more than I wanted to hear he was safe. “No, really!” Ben shouts. “Did you see the size of his—”

  I hold the phone away from my face and close my eyes. “Dude,” I say when I lift it back up. “Can we focus?”

  “Right,” Ben says. “On your girlfriend’s reaction to having her breasts bared to the world. I still don’t get your fascination with those.”

  “I remember. And she’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Whaaaaat? Wyatt, he says she’s not his girlfriend.” On the other end I hear Wyatt echoing Ben’s whaaaaat.

  I sigh. “It’s complicated, okay?”

  “Complicated like she’s still into Shane?”

  “No,” I say. “Complicated like she has commitment issues, but she loves me, so she’s working on them.”

  Ben is quiet for a moment. “Dude. Is this girl jerking you around?”

  I close my eyes again. She said she loves me, and I believe her. I just wish that gave me more confidence things were going to work out. “No. She’s not into Shane. And apparently her best friend talked some sense into her, and she’s doing better with the commitment thing. She’s just not ready for the label.”

  Ben hesitates, and I know what he’s thinking. That sounds like what a girl would say when she’s jerking me around. “It’s not like that,” I say. “She’s got all this stuff in her past. Her dad’s been married three times, and her ex-boyfriends are assholes. She’s apparently been avoiding relationships that involve actual feelings for years, but now she’s in love with me and she’s scared I’m going to hurt her.”

  “Really? She’s afraid of you?”

  “Of what she feels for me,” I repeat, leaning against the house. I suddenly feel so tired, I’m not sure I can continue to stay upright. In the heat of last night—god, the heat, I have never had sex like that in my life—this had all seemed okay, but today something she said keeps bothering me. “I think she feels safer with guys who are assholes because there’s no real attachment, so it won’t hurt when it ends. And this is all going so fast, I have no idea if she’s going to change her mind and back out, but I’m in love with her and I don’t want to leave until I know for sure.”

  Ben’s quiet again, and I hear Wyatt pestering him for details on the other end. “Yeah, man. That’s a tough call.”

  I take a deep breath. “I get why she’s hesitant, but it’s driving me a little bit crazy knowing that at any minute she might rightly decide I’m not worth the stress.”

  “You are,” Ben says. “But I get it.”

  “Does this ever get less scary?”

  “Yeah. Like, after you’re married.”

  I wince. “I may have told her if she wanted she could skip the girlfriend stage.”

  “Whaaaaat?” Ben says again. “And like, what? Get married?”

  “I wasn’t specific,” I knock my head back against the wall of the house. I probably shouldn’t have said that, which is basically the theme of the week. “Be my fiancée, I guess?”

  “Wow,” Ben says, and I can tell he doesn’t entirely approve. I can’t blame him. If he was talking about getting engaged to some guy I’d never met, I’d be terrified. “Are you sure about this?” he says finally.

  “No.” The words had felt so true when I said them, and they still do. I want to be with Anna-Marie more than anything, and if I have to commit long-term to make that happen, I’d do it in an instant. Happily. But even if that wasn’t a really stupid thing to say to a girl I’m already crowding, there’s no reason to think she couldn’t panic and leave me just because we skipped a damn step. If she did, it might hurt even more. “I’m scared as hell. But right now I need you to send me those links, and I want a text immediately if it hits any major news outlets, or if the story changes to anything out of the ordinary, okay?”

  “We’re on it,” Ben says, and I nod. This is miles better than using the publicity people at work. Wyatt’s going to be glued to this story anyway, doubly so because I’m involved.

  “Thanks,” I say. “You guys are the best.”

  “We know. And hey, you said Anna-Marie has a best friend who’s on your side, right?”

  “Gabby. They’re roommates.”

  “Get me Gabby’s number,” he says. “I want to make sure Anna-Marie checks out.”

  I smile. I should probably think that’s an invasion of my privacy, but if the situation was reversed, I’d want to do the same thing.

  “I’ll ask,” I say.

  “Okay. And you better call me when things calm down. I need all the details.”

  “Done.” And I hang up the phone, but it immediately rings in my hand. It’s an unfamiliar LA number, and I answer.

  “Josh Rios,” I say.

  “Josh!” a man’s voice says. “Glad I could reach you. This is Brent Farthing. How are you doing?”

  I grit my teeth. Brent is Anna-Marie’s agent. Or he was, until this morning. “Great!” I say, faking my tone. “Hey, I’m glad you called. I was just about to contact you.” This is a lie, but I should have been on top of this. If it had been a client I was less involved with, I would have been. “I’m sure you’re getting inquiries about the video, and I’m going to need each and every one forwarded to me. You got it?” The last thing I need is Anna-Marie’s bitter ex-agent handling media comments.

  “That’s what I’m calling about,” Brent says. “You couldn’t have known about this when you made her that offer, and you and I both know what you’re in this for isn’t worth this kind of trouble. Send her back my way, and we can just forget it ever happened.”

  I want to chew him out for suggesting I only signed her to sleep with her. “Actually, I’m thrilled to be working with her. She
’s a really promising actress, as I’m sure you know, and definitely worth any trouble. So send me those inquiries, Brent, and I’ll take care of it.”

  Brent drops the polite act. “Really, Rios? There aren’t enough other starlets you can bang? You have to poach mine?”

  I hold back a laundry list of objections to that accusation, but my anger seeps into my tone. “The inquiries,” I say firmly. “Now.”

  “Fine, whatever. But don’t say I didn’t give you the out. Word is there’s more coming, but if you want to be the one to mop up the mess, be my guest.”

  And, somehow, that asshole manages to be the one who hangs up on me.

  I groan and bump my head against the wall again, and then head off to find Anna-Marie. Because whatever Brent thinks, I mean it. She’s worth all this trouble—the drive to Wyoming, her interesting family and their strange obsession with my cultural origins, the fear and the uncertainty, and definitely whatever problems are going to arise from the fallout of this video. She’s not the first actress to end up naked on the internet.

  But it’s the first time for her, and even though I’m her agent, I’m mostly worried about whether or not the girl I love is going to be okay.

  Seventeen

  Anna-Marie

  I can’t handle watching the full video with my family and half of Everett looking on, so while Josh makes his phone calls, I take my phone into the house. I run upstairs and realize my room doesn’t have a lock, and damn it, I need to lock out the rest of the world right now. So I hide out in the bathroom.

  Before I can even play the video, I see that I have several texts—a few from concerned friends and co-stars (Matt/Bruce is especially worried about how I’m handling this, if the long string of emoji-faces is any indication) and, more concerningly, one from my director.

  Hey Anna-Marie. Give me a call.

  Shit.

  Am I going to lose my job? I’m on a soap opera, not freaking Sesame Street. But even if I manage to stay on Southern Heat, this could follow me into all my future auditions—I can forget about scoring the Jessica Biel role in the Seventh Heaven reboot (that, okay, isn’t a real thing, but totally should be).

  But the pit in my gut has less to do with my career than the sheer dread of watching the video. I clench my teeth and click play.

  It’s everything I feared from that brief snippet I saw outside—thirty-three seconds total, over fifteen of which are me being totally nude, inept at putting on shorts, and even worse, all filmed in terribly unflattering lighting. It ends with Shane, who is laughing the entire time, pulling himself out of the pool. So he’s naked, too, but unlike me, he appears completely unfazed. Totally confident in his skin. Whereas I look like Gabby the time I took her to that new sauna and it turned out to have a co-ed changing room. Thankfully Mr. Dart isn’t in the shot, so at the very least I don’t appear to have been sexing it up in a really unbalanced three-way.

  I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t. Hell, I work my ass off—literally—to have a body I should be proud of displaying to the world. But as I play the video a second time, and then a third, I find that my hands are shaking, and it’s getting harder to breathe. I pace the small bathroom, each sharp clip of my Zara sandals on the tile floor pinging against my nerves, but I can’t stop moving in circles.

  “Anna-Marie?”

  It’s Josh, calling from the kitchen. A beat, and then I hear his footsteps climbing the stairs. I hug the phone to my chest. The video is playing again, and even though I can’t see the screen anymore, I can hear Shane’s laugh. Hear one of the Boy Scouts say “Awesome,” and others murmur their agreement.

  He calls my name again, just down the hall, and my pulse beats in my ears. Surely he’s seen it by now. He’s my agent. It’s his damn job, now, to watch me naked in this video with Shane and figure out how to spin it. Even though it’s going to hurt him.

  I’m afraid to face him.

  I also need him, in this primal, visceral way.

  This latter instinct wins out. I open the door and see him half in the doorway to my room, peering in. He turns and sees me there in the bathroom door. I haven’t been crying, but I must look a wreck, judging by the look Josh gives me, his expression softening.

  “Hey,” he says, stepping up to me close enough that I can smell the smoke from the grilling and the spices from his carne asada. He puts his hands on my arms. “So I’ve made some calls, and I’ve got my people keeping track of—”

  I don’t let him finish. I grab him by his shirt front and pull him into the bathroom with me, only pausing for the barest second to slam and lock the door before I’m pressed against him, my mouth on his and my hands already tugging at the waistband of his shorts.

  He responds without much more prompting. Before long, my jean shorts are off and he’s boosted me up onto the sink. The ceramic is cold on my ass, and I’m guessing this sink hasn’t been sanitized in months, but I need this, and judging by the returned intensity, I think maybe he does too.

  It’s not the same experience of last night, under the stars, buoyed by his whispers of love and long, lingering touches. But it’s raw and powerful and more than enough to keep me from having to think, which is what I really want right now more than anything else.

  And it feels so good.

  After, he holds me pressed against him, and kisses the top of my head. The whirling rage of emotions from before are still there, but muted now. At least I feel like I can breathe again.

  “So was the drive worth it?” I ask. “Now that you’ve tasted the hot dogs?”

  “Mmmm,” Josh says against my hair. “Yeah, definitely. For the hot dogs.”

  He sounds pretty blissed out for a guy who just became aware of a sex tape with me and another man, though I suppose he’s just had the real-life thing. “I think I just used you for your body,” I mumble into his neck.

  “I’m never going to complain about that.”

  I hop down from the sink, but my legs don’t quite feel up to supporting me. I slide down so that I’m sitting on the fuzzy mat. He pulls up his shorts and sits down next to me, his dark eyes taking me in. “Are you really worried about that? Because it’s fine. I get it.”

  I’m not sure I do. It’s not like I haven’t handled a stressful situation or two in my life with some quickie-therapy, and that was certainly part of it. But I didn’t just need sex; I needed Josh.

  Is this part of being in love? I draw my legs up to my chest, my hands trembling again.

  “No,” I say. “It’s not that. It’s just the video.” If this is a lie, it’s only partly so. “It’s got me all messed up. Which is ridiculous. It’s not like I’m one of those actresses who swore I’d never do nude scenes.”

  Josh shakes his head. “That would be you consenting to be filmed nude under carefully controlled conditions. This is totally different. And you have every right to be upset about it.”

  “I like that you think about it that way.” I squeeze his hand. “I’m guessing I have your mother and her women’s studies to thank?”

  He hangs his head, like he’s embarrassed of not being a dismissive asshole. “Probably. But my little brother Adrian grew up with the same lectures I did, and he still left his wife last year to party and sleep around and snort cocaine, so I might have to take some of the credit.”

  I try not to wince as I think that even Josh, aware as he is of all these issues, could still slip into something like that. I don’t want to believe that, but I don’t know how not to. I rest my head back against the cabinet under the sink. “I’ve got like a dozen emotions happening right now, and upset may be one of them. I’m not even sure. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve generally spent my life being emotionally . . . avoidant.”

  “I may have noticed,” he says drolly. Which almost, almost teases a smile out of me. Then he runs his hand gently along my bare calf. “Why don’t y
ou try to separate out the emotions. Name them for me.”

  I give him a look. “And afterward, are you going to bring out some crayons and have me draw my feelings?”

  His lips quirk upward. “Let’s try this first. I left my feelings crayons back in LA.”

  I sigh. I’m not sure this will help, but the guy is sitting half-naked on a bathroom floor mat with me, so I probably owe him an attempt. “Well, I’m angry. Like seriously pissed at whatever little turd in a merit-badge sash posted this.”

  “Me too. Are you mad at anyone else?”

  I think about this, and then shift, uncomfortably. “At myself.”

  His eyebrows draw together. “Really? Why?”

  “Because I shouldn’t have even been with Shane that night!” The words burst out of me. “Let alone skinny-dipping with him in a place that is apparently a favorite Everett camping spot.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I can feel my face flush. “Yeah, maybe not technically. But if I hadn’t been the kind of idiot that had to go sleep with my ex-boyfriend to try to prove to myself I didn’t have feelings for someone else—”

  “Anna-Marie,” he says softly, putting his other hand on my other calf, turning me slightly so I’m facing him. “Maybe you made a decision you aren’t proud of, but so has everyone else in the whole damn world. It doesn’t mean you deserve this.”

  He’s right. I know he is. But not everyone will agree with him. “The gossip sites are going to say I’m cheating on you.”

  He pauses, then nods. “Maybe. But you weren’t, and it’s none of their business anyway, so they can fuck off.”