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Don’t cause a scene.
Paxton doesn’t wait for me to respond; he just looks at Damian in the way a man looks at another for their co-sign when they think a woman is being unreasonable. I can almost hear the,you know how she can be…in the two-second glance. “Can you give us a second?”
I go to respond when Damian beats me to it. “No. When she wants to talk to you, she will. Back off, Paxton.” Damian turns his back to him, putting himself between me and my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, and ushers me out. Like every other time, he doesn’t touch me, but I can feel his hand hovering at the small of my back.
“What the fuck? Shay!” I hear Paxton call after me but I keep walking towards the entrance of the club and I’m grateful there’s a long-enclosed hallway before we get outside granting me a second of peace before I have to face the paparazzi.
I’m even more relieved that Paxton didn’t follow me.
I stop walking when I hear the door close behind me, leaving Damian and me alone in the long corridor. He’s a few steps ahead of me and I don’t know when he realizes I’ve stopped walking but moments later, I see his black Tom Ford loafers that I’d gotten him for Christmas—I practically had to beg him to keep them.Something about them not being practical.
I’m staring at the ground, the adrenaline slowing down and the reality of what the fuck just happened settling in, when I hear his voice, smooth and even as it washes over me like the warm shower after getting caught in a freezing rainstorm. “Shay, look at me.” My gaze darts up to his obediently and his blue eyes, that were previously cold and angry, are soft. “You cannot cry right now.” I blink away the unshed tears that are pooling in my eyes and nod in preparation to wade through a sea of flashes that will scrutinize every facial expression I make while I walk to the car. “You have a few seconds before we’re out there and you’re in front of the cameras and the paparazzi are going to have questions especially if you’re leaving alone when they know Paxton is here. Don’t let them see you cry. You can cry once we get in the car.” He leans down so that we’re at eye level. “Don’t give them that.”
Five Years Ago
“Idon’t understand. I already have security,” I tell my father, pushing my sunglasses to the top of my head as he, my mother, and my manager are now blocking me from the sun where I’m sunbathing beside the pool at my parents’ house.
My father stares down at me with a look I haven’t been on the receiving side of many times and I blanch under his narrowed gaze. Tall and slender but with a muscular build after years of college sports and a few years of playing semi-professional basketball, my father is now a lawyer at one of the top entertainment firms in the state. “That you ditch constantly to get into trouble with Veronica. They are both way too easygoing for our taste. You need someone that isn’t so easily manipulated.”
Veronica chirps from the other side of me. “Hey, what did I do!?” She peeks up over the latest issue ofVogueand lowers her sunglasses to the bridge of her nose before pushing them back into her cornsilk blonde hair. “I hardly call going to the mall, brunch at the Grove, and going to the occasional bar getting into trouble. Come on Mr. E.”
“You’re not twenty-one!” my mother exclaims, crossing her hands across her chest. They’re both tanned to a rich mocha and glowing from their recent trip to Mexico on what was probably their fourth honeymoon, a trip they had to cut early because of what happened last week.
I knew this was coming, just not this fast.
Veronica looks at my mom with a surprised expression. “So what, you think we’ll get arrested?” The humor in her voice is evident and despite the irritation that was previously flowing off my father, he chuckles.
“Not. The. Point.” She points between us before smacking my father’s arm. “Do not encourage her.” She turns back to Veronica. “Your parents put us in charge while you’re out here and I do believe you promised them that you’d behave.”
Veronica’s parents live in Chicago with her younger siblings and a medical practice her father isn’t prepared to leave until he retired, so when she signed on for the spin-off to the television show we’d been on for five years, she moved out here permanently to live with me. We’d been best friends for years, about as long as our characters had been, making us more like sisters.
“Look, I’m not going to get on you about going out. I’ve gotten you this far without any scandals and bullshit. You’re eighteen now and I can’t make you stay out of trouble,” my father starts. “If you want to tarnish the reputation that you’ve built to become the clichéd child star turned party girl, by all means.” He waves his hand and I roll my eyes at the reverse psychology. “But being eighteen means you have different eyes on you now, and after what happened last week, I’m not taking any chances.”
I’ll be honest; the situation last week did shake me up a little. I was used to the paparazzi. I was used to fans. Fans that told me they loved me, fans that wanted to be my best friend, fans that wanted me to sign things for their daughters and nieces and granddaughters. Boysmy agethat would tell me they loved me or slide in my Instagram DMs asking me to go to their proms with them.
What I wasnotused to was grown men that were fans. Grown men that were nowlegallyable to engage with me.
I was out shopping one day, admittedly alone because I had ditched my security. I was just at the mall, and was rather incognito when I was approached and then followed around for most of the day by this guy that may or may not have been trying to lure me into a windowless van. I texted one of my guy friends from the show a very panicked SOS and when he showed up with three of his friends in tow, it led to a swarm of paparazzi because“An ‘LA Days and Ways’ reunion!”It also led to a rumor that we were dating that lasted for two news cycles.
My parents eventually caught wind of what happened when I had to explain to them that Bryan Whitlock—Hollywood’s bad boy and not in a good way—and I were not dating and why I called him in the first place. This opened the floodgates of the “fan mail” they’d evidently been keeping from me. And by fan mail, I mean pornographic letters of what men and some women wanted to do to me.
Sometimeswhile I resisted.
“You’re meeting him tomorrow morning, so be in my office at eleven,” my manager, Cooper Jennings, from the time I was just doing Pampers commercials, speaks up. Cooper has always been on my side and takes my feelings into consideration more so than my parents do sometimes. He’d backed me up in arguments when I didn’t want to go for certain auditions and even convinced my parents that getting highlights and a nose ring wouldn’t be the worst idea.Sure, the nose ring lasted about five minutes but principle.
“Wait, you’ve already chosen him!?” I sit up completely and my eyes widen, shooting to Cooper who I always thought reminded me of a young George Clooney without the mullet. “Really?!”
“We’ve been holding interviews all week.” My father gives me a look that says,do you have a problem with that?”
“Shouldn’t I have been allowed to sit in? Ever heard of a screen test? What if we don’t get along?!” I screech thinking about some of the friends I have who can’t stand their bodyguards. The ones that treat them like their prisoners and don’t even allow them to go to the bathroom alone. The ones that sit one table over from us at brunch making it impossible to talk about anything personal. The ones that report on every single move they make to their parents and agents.
“You will get along great with him. He’s very nice.” My mother speaks up as she tucks a strand of her new sleek bob haircut behind her ear. “And he comes highly recommended!”
“By who?”
“A guy from work,” my father says. “He was on the security team for one of our top clients.”
“Why isn’t he anymore?” I ask, immediately conjuring a story in my head that he was fired for something scandalous.
