“You’re doing good,” she encouraged me as she swept me down into an after-party. “Now work the crowd. Show me you’re worth every penny.”
Ick. Now I felt like a pole dancer with a twenty stuffed into my thong.
“Ash’ll be here in a few,” Lola told me as she disappeared into the crowd.
So many celebrities, so little time. Had I thought I’d seen some big names earlier? That was before the show. Now, things really exploded. Faces from TV, movies, hip hop stars, popstars, a few guys I figured had to be professional basketball players, nearly seven feet tall and built like brick shithouses.
“Ten, nine, eight!” the crowd started chanting. It was seconds away from midnight. Ash must still be on stage, counting it down with the fans.
“I want to kiss Ash’s girl!” a girl in a tiny scrap of a dress squealed.
“No, I want to!” another girl in an even tinier scrap of a dress bitch-slapped her rival across the face and leaned in as she screamed “Two! One!”
Amidst the din of horns and yells of “Happy New Year!”, she puckered, pressed in close and planted a big one on me.
“Girl on girl!” a guy next to us called out with glee. The woman trying to have her way with me wrapped her hands around my waist. Somehow, I twisted out of her grip, lurching to the side and away into the crowd. Streamers and confetti fell from the ceiling. Every face looked familiar but yet there was no one I knew.
A cold hand reached out and grasped my wrist. I flinched, wondering if it was the girl, back for more.
It wasn’t. It was former American Idol winner singing sensation Mandy Monroe.
“Hello, Anika.” She smiled at me, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. When people used my full name Anika, it almost never meant anything good. Occasionally my mother would use it kindly, but it usually heralded the beginning of a long inquisition about something I’d done wrong. My Uncle Yuri used it from time-to-time in a neutral manner, as in, “Could you pass the herring, Anika?” And, come to think of it, Ash had called me Anika a few times in a good way. But out of Mandy’s sneering, cherry red lips, I could tell it did not bode well.
“Hey there.” I looked around for an easy out, but saw nothing save a swirling wall of people, packing us in from all sides. More practiced at navigating her way through crowds, Mandy pulled us into a corner. I would have been able to breathe better there, but for one problem. Mandy was still by my side.
“How are you?” she asked with the wide, pitying eyes of someone who really wished you were squished like a bug on a windshield.
“OK,” I squeaked, grabbing a flute of champagne from a passing tray. I downed it in seconds flat.
“I’m so worried about you, Anika. You’re so naïve. And you’re with such a bad guy.”
“Thanks, Mandy.” Maybe I could get her off topic by telling her that I loved her songs? I knew a whole bunch of them because my roommate Jillian played them all the time. Honestly, they’d never grown on me.
She grabbed a fistful of fabric from the torso of my dress. It was quite an accomplishment, given how slim-fitting and tight the dress was. But Mandy meant business.
“He broke my heart!” she declared, literally bringing the back of her free hand up to her forehead and pressing it there like a silent film star. Her eyes took on a misty, faraway look. Even though I didn’t really trust her more than I could throw her, she captured my attention. The fist gripping my dress saw to that.
“Do you know what it’s like to give a man everything? Every last shred of your soul? To give all of yourself and more? And then have him stomp on it?”
I gulped. Awkward. Uncomfortable. I wanted to make light of it all, launch a few sarcastic barbs at her, maybe ask ‘if you gave all of yourself, how did you also give more?’ But a larger part of me was riveted. I knew she was probably making stuff up, putting on a show for me for some manipulative reason. But here’s the thing: she made her living by putting on shows. She was damn good at it.
“I know that pain,” she told me, and I could see it there, etched on her lovely features, haunting her perfect, round eyes. But then her eyes narrowed and she took on the look of a hawk. “You’ll know it, too,” she cursed me.
I looked around again, searching for someone, anyone I could pull in and say, “hey, look, it’s Mandy Monroe” then pull a classic bait-and-switch. But no one met my eye and Mandy kept holding on to me. There was some strength in that tiny five-foot-three coalminer’s daughter frame of hers.
“He’ll break your heart,” she hissed. I swear, if she’d added ‘my pretty’ and broken into a cackle she would have been a shoe-in for the Wicked Witch of the West.
“OK, well, thanks for the warning.”
“I thought he was the one,” she insisted. “And here he is not a month later asking you to marry him. That’s fucked up.”
I had to agree with her on that one. This whole situation was fucked up.
“I’ve got to go.” I twisted away from her. I swear she pulled a fistful of glitter off of my dress.
“Don’t trust him!” she called after me and damn if her words didn’t send a chill down my spine. I knew she was being melodramatic and manipulative. I didn’t need Ash to point that out, every ounce of instinct in me cried out to not trust that woman. But something in what she said resonated.
That’s when I saw Ash over by the door. He’d just arrived at the after party, flanked by Connor and a slew of other revelers. The room erupted into more cheers and screams, the DJ pumped up the volume of a thumping tune and everything seemed to pound into me, elbows, bass, feet. Even if I tried to make my way over to Ash, I didn’t think I could have, not trapped in the crowd like I was.
But I could see him, tall by the door, and then over by the bar. Two people he was with climbed up on top of it, then pulled him up with them. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but they were yelling and I saw the bartender pouring them shots.
Who was that Ash was with? The guy had purple hair peeking out of a pink knitted cap and a full sleeve of tattoos. Something about that perfect pout of his lips looked familiar. Was that Justin Bieber?
The girl next to him on the bar took off her top, swung it around and flung it into the crowd. She had small, perky breasts and a long tongue she stuck out, raising her fingers into a V around it. Wait, was that Miley Cyrus?
Was Ash up standing on a bar doing shots with Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus? I had to be hallucinating. I rubbed my eyes but then a huge guy who had to be another pro-athlete, stood directly in front of me. I couldn’t see a thing anymore.
But I didn’t need to see any more. This was insane. Whatever I’d thought I’d felt in Paris wasn’t real. It was the city of love, or lights, or maybe both? Whatever people called it, how could you be expected to not fall hard for whomever you were with? Add in amazing food, the light snowfall, and the music we made together and, I mean, please, Ash could look like Quasimodo and I probably would have thought he was the love of my life.
And he wasn’t Quasimodo, he was Ash Black, People magazine’s sexiest man of the year two years running and my own personal rock star fantasy. I had a freaking poster of him up in my room from high school. Could you blame me for thinking it was real?
No, I didn’t blame myself for my past mistakes, but I did know I needed to get the hell out of that party. I needed to check into my own quiet hotel room, have a nice long hot shower, then fly back to New York. I wouldn’t mind doing another public appearance or two, something to keep the ruse going, to make sure the library branch got its 20 years of funding.
But private time, with just me and Ash? That had to end. He was having the time of his life, in his element over there
dancing on top of a bar with what may or may not be two of the craziest, wildest, most infamous celebrities of our generation.
But I was losing my mind. One minute I was jumping his bones, the next vomiting with nerves. I couldn’t take this roller coaster ride anymore. I needed out. I had to go find Ash and tell him I was leaving. Then I needed to do just that.
18
Ash
That couldn’t be Mandy over by Ana in the crowd, could it? I squinted and tried to peer through all the craziness. It was probably just me being paranoid. But I hadn’t smoked any weed, and I swore when I first walked into the party I saw a girl who looked exactly like my psycho ex talking to Ana.
But now I couldn’t see either of them. I stepped down off the bar, even though that provided a better vantage point. I’d have better luck finding Ana pushing through the crowd.
“There’s the man!” Some guy from my agent’s firm clapped me on the back. Gary, Gus, I couldn’t remember his name. He was one of the younger guys who Joel sent out into the fray. Joel didn’t schlep around at parties like this anymore. He liked to tell me he was done with all that. He was a family guy now.
“I hear you, Joel,” I murmured, surveying the scene, searching for Ana to no avail. Here I was, the man of the hour on New Year’s fucking Eve, not exactly stone cold sober but nowhere near as crazy as I typically got on a casual Tuesday night. I didn’t want to do more shots on top of the bar with wild and crazy celebrities pulling wild and crazy stunts. I wanted to see my woman.
Was that her? I thought I caught a glimpse of her light brown hair, confetti caught in her locks. She’d looked so gorgeous tonight, so sexy in that tiny dress with cleavage a man could drown in. What a way to go. And the way she’d jumped me and rode me like a cowgirl at a rodeo? Holy shit, that had been a whole lot of all right. I needed more of that right now.