Chapter 3

 

‘Paisley!’

‘Oh, somebody’s in trou-ble!’ Max trills from beside me.

‘Not again,’ I grumble, pulling myself up from the sofa and wrapping my robe tighter, following Chastity’s voice to her gleaming commercial-grade kitchen.

Her golden hair in large rollers, she stands by the open door of the dishwasher as steam billows out.

‘Why is my dishwasher full of dildos?’ she asks.

‘Because you told me to load them in the dishwasher,’ I reply, gesturing with an open palm to a job well done even as the realisation dawns that this is somehow mistake number 221 for the week. And I’m suddenly pleased I didn’t tell her about the interview yesterday . . .

‘I asked you, not told,’ she corrects with the patience of a teacher dealing with an underachieving child. ‘But I didn’t think for one minute you’d bring them home.’

‘What was I supposed to do with them?’ I ask perplexed. ‘Is that what the rubber gloves were for?’ My face scrunches with distaste because eww! Hand washing other people’s fun from silicone? ‘Please don’t say yes because that would be a new low—at a time that already feels like rock bottom.’

‘I meant in the studio dishwasher not the dishwasher at home, for fuck’s sake.’

I will never get used to the way she sounds when she swears. She looks like she’s just tumbled from heaven, all cherubic cheeks, blond ringlets, and doe eyes, and she’s just so goddamned posh, both how she looks and sounds, and is at complete odds with what sometimes comes out of her mouth. Especially when we’re on set and she’s giving out directions.

Milos, darling, if you could pull out of her before you come, we’ll get the money shot . . . yes, all over her bottom, if you will. Deena, can you try to deep throat him this time?

Welcome to my life because while Chastity is the owner, director, and producer for Fast Girl Media, I’m her new right-hand girl. That is, if right-hand girls fit like a left-hand glove with the fingers glued into a fist. But I also do on-set makeup, which is what I did in my previous professional life. Only then, I applied it mainly from the neck up . . .

That aside, we’re an odd pairing, Chastity and me. Her with her blue blood and me with the Upstate New York hay still stuck in my hair. But I don’t know where I’d be without her. Or her spare room. Not after the shit my fiancé pulled.

‘For the record,’ she begins patiently again. ‘Toy washing isn’t your responsibility. Ever. But these toys? They’re new. I’m thinking of stocking them on the website and thought I’d ask the professionals for their opinions. But I say again; they’re new—unused. I would never . . . ’ Her expression twists indelicately. ‘But I appreciate your help, anyway.’

‘Even when I get it wrong?’

‘Yes, even then.’ She pushes the dishwasher door closed with her foot as though it’s contaminated.

‘For someone who spends her day watching people stick their bits into other people’s bits, you’re awfully squeamish,’ Max, her brother, suddenly gloats from the doorway.

‘Leave her alone,’ Chas warns.

‘I was talking about you,’ he responds.

‘I’m not talking about this with you.’

‘No, you won’t talk business with me at all,’ he complains mulishly.

‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; go play porn star somewhere else. I have no issues with you being in the business, but I’m not watching or paying you to fuck.’

‘Backing away slowly,’ I say, doing just that.

‘Good,’ Chas retorts. ‘Go put on your pretty dress. We’ve a wedding to attend.’

Dammit. ‘But I don’t want to go,’ I reply on a whine, stamping my slipper-shod foot against the tile. ‘It’s just plain cruel to make me.’

‘But there’s a kindness in my cruelty. And I think you know that well.’

‘Why don’t I just fuck her?’ Max pipes up. ‘It’d save you a wedding gift. Look, she’s already in her dressing gown. And I bet she’s wearing a little Agent Provocateur under there.’

‘Have you been peeking!’ I squeak, grasping the neck of my robe tighter. Neither of us take his suggestion seriously. Max is Chas’s little brother, though he towers over us both. He’s twenty-two, fresh out of university, and has no idea what to do with his life. While he might be interested in the business, he’s joking about being in front of the camera. I think.

‘We all know a suitcase full of Louboutins and fancy underwear was all you brought with you when you walked out,’ Max replies. And though his delivery is light-hearted, it still burns because what he’s referring to is when I left my fiancé after finding he’d somehow tripped and accidentally inserted his dick into someone else.

I open my mouth to protest, but nothing comes out. My chest feels tight, panicked by a lack of air suddenly.

‘And possibly a case of only left feet shoes at that,’ he then adds.

‘Stay out of her room, pervert,’ Chas warns on my behalf, patting his cheek as she passes. ‘It’s probably him hiding your shoes, darling,’ she says, turning back to me.

But it’s not Max. My shoes have an awful habit of hiding themselves, and they have done so for most of my life. It’s like they can sense when I want to wear a particular pair, then make only one of that pair available to me. It’s a curse, I’m sure.

Chas pauses dramatically at the door. ‘And while I’m sure Paisley is, no doubt, touched by your generosity, brother mine, go near her, and I’ll sell you into sex slavery.’

‘Don’t look too excited,’ I add, following her out of the room. ‘She means the gay kind.’

In the first-floor bedroom of her swanky Chelsea pad, I find Chastity slipping on her pale green dress, the silk chiffon floating down her slim frame like a cloud of seafoam.

‘I really don’t see what difference it’ll make,’ I say, dropping my oversized makeup bag on her bed. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘I’m aware,’ she says, catching my gaze through her dresser mirror as she unfastens the large rollers from her hair. ‘But trust me.’

‘But I really don’t want to go,’ I say, throwing myself on her soft, downy bed. ‘They were never my friends. Not really. Unless you’re counting them by proxy.’

‘I hope you’re not including me in that assumption.’

‘Of course I’m not,’ I reply, plucking at the hem of a decorative pillow sham. ‘If it wasn’t for you, I’d be on a plane for bumfuck nowhere by now.’ Or, bumfuck Lamberston in Upstate New York. Population: 3,012. And I’d be the girl who snagged a British singer—someone famous—only to lose him again. Of course, no one would mention how I’d moved out of Lamberston to follow my career to Albany for WTEN, making sure the faces for the Wake up with 10 show didn’t go on air looking like zombies. Or how I’d moved to NYC to de-zombie-ize the stars and guests of Good Morning America. Nope. Because like lots of small town folk, the gossip would focus on how I couldn’t keep my man and how my fabulous London life was just a bubble that was bound to burst.

I suppress a shiver at the thought of going back. I might not be feeling exactly fabulous right now, but at least I’m not in Lamberston.

‘Those kinds of friends you don’t need, sweets.’ Chas is referring to my supposed London friends who dropped me like a pair of dirty panties when Robin and I split. Though her assumption could equally relate to my thoughts.

‘It’s a good thing you chose me over him is all I can say.’ Chastity is one of the many people I met through Robin, my ex-fiancé. She was one of his friends originally. She also happens to be the only one who hung around after we split. Hung around. Offered moral support, a kind ear. Then later, a job and a place to live.

‘Like there was even a choice to be made.’ Sitting next to me, she takes my hand in hers. ‘I, for one, am so very pleased you’re still in London. And while I would’ve preferred you not to have suffered the indignities of finding out your fiancé was cheating on you, it’s better you found out now rather than later.’

‘Yeah, like after the wedding.’ I chuckle, though it sounds as forced as it feels. I’m no longer heartbroken, but I’m still sad. I’m also grateful for Chas, and squeeze her hand as though this could somehow convey just how thankful I am. Without her, I wouldn’t be functioning, never mind making a living while I look for something new. Without her, I wouldn’t even have a roof over my head. 

‘And he won’t be there today, not that it matters. It’s time, darling. Time to move on and show those around you that you’ve moved on. That they and their fair-weather friendship means nothing to you.’

‘But if I’m no longer part of their world, I don’t need to go.’

‘Good try,’ she answers with a sad smile, glancing down at my stained robe. ‘But it’s time to try harder now.’

‘But it’s still hard,’ I whisper.

‘I know it is. But it’s the other kind of hard you need. We just need to get you out of that grubby thing and into your dress because that look isn’t doing it for anybody.’

‘Except for Max.’

‘Darling, he’d do my dog. If I had one.’

‘Thanks,’ I respond, laughing a little.

‘For God’s sake, put a little of this on,’ she says, hefting my makeup bag between us. A bag with a slogan that reads, contouring is my cardio.

Makeup is my world. At least, it’s what brought me to London in the first place. I met Robin at work. He had a short interview as part of his tour, though, at that point, he was still largely unknown. There I was, working and making faces look a little less I get out of bed at 4 a.m. for this shit, when he’d sat in my chair. I’d tucked the tissues into the collar of his shirt, our eyes had met, and the rest, as they say, was history.

The ancient kind of history now. Long dead and crumbling to dust.

‘Chas, promise me you’ll never fall in love with a rock star.’

‘Rock star, my left tit.’ She snorts—the kind of snort unbecoming of a lady. ‘And I don’t give a flying fuck if he hates the label pop star because he’s not even that. Not that I’d find the label very flattering, either.’

‘He’s more folksy pop.’

‘He’s more the grandma crowd, as well as a complete arse wipe.’

Both are sadly true. He does play the kind of music that appeals to families. Middle-of-the-road stuff. Though I would never have said it to him. His ego is . . . delicate. At least, I thought it was. Until I found him screwing Tamara, his assistant. Or his assistant’s assistant.

‘God, what had my life come to that I’d call Robin’s hangers-on my friends?’ I find myself asking.

‘Exactly.’

‘So much I took for granted—so much I thought I knew. I thought I knew him. I thought his songs were about our love! Sung from his heart, standing on the stage with his guitar and his messy, roan hair.’

‘Roan,’ Chastity scoffs. ‘The man is ginger. An ugly carrot-top.’

‘With a fiery crotch to match.’ I snigger, covering my mouth with my hand.

‘The only thing outstanding about the area,’ she affirms with a quirk of her brow.

So I might’ve told her about that over wine. Okay, crying angry tears and drunk off my ass. Let’s just say that average, as a description, is an overstatement.

‘You deserve better than is it in yet, so coming back to the topic of hard . . . You need hard loving, and that’s what you get from me. But you also need the other kind of hard. The kind I can’t give you.’

‘Is that some kind of riddle? Because I don’t really—’

‘Dick, darling,’ she says, cutting in. ‘You need a man with a hard dick. An alpha—the absolute opposite of the kind of man you fell for.’ While I might suggest she’s overstepping, I don’t. Because she already did that when she gifted me a dildo.

Patting my hand, she rises from the bed and makes her way back to her dressing table mirror. ‘The reason we’re going tonight is that a wedding hookup is the perfect scenario. It’s practically a singles tradition.’

‘You have the weirdest ideas.’

Turning her head over her shoulder with the poise of a debutant, she asks, ‘Like starting a porn company?’

‘Women-centric adult entertainment, thank you very much. And no, that seems to have been a fantastic idea.’ Financially, at least.

‘And I’m full of them,’ she replies, twirling to face me again. ‘And this one is much better than my first.’

‘The look on your face has me worried. Should I be worried?’

‘Well, my original plan was—and still possibly is, especially if you’re absolutely against tonight—that I could set you up with one of the boys.’ 

‘Boys?’ I repeat, frowning back at her. ‘You mean, with one of the p—adult actors?’ I ask, quickly catching my mistake.

‘The men who work for me all seem to know what they’re doing in that department. And I’ve seen the way one or two of them look at you.’ She shrugs lightly, as though this conversation is nothing. As though she was offering me a selection of bonbons and not men. ‘And why wouldn’t they?’ she asks the room at large. ‘You’re a total babe even if you have become a bit of a slob.’

‘A slob!’ I repeat, incredulous.

‘Did that hit a nerve?’ she asks with a slight wince.

‘Well, yes!’

‘Good,’ she adds in a firmer tone. ‘You are a bit of a mess. You used to be obsessed with makeup, and now you barely even moisturise.’

‘So you thought you’d ask a porn star to pity fuck me?’ I whisper-hiss. I might shout but for the fact that Max is downstairs, and I could do without his input.

‘How ridiculous,’ she retorts. ‘You’re being deliberately obtuse. You are gorgeous, makeup or not. I’m just worried you’ve lost a little joie de vivre.  Your mojo.’

‘I know what joie de vivre means!’ Sort of. And I’m still not banging a porn star. ‘My God, this wedding is looking more and more attractive by the second.’

‘Good—perfect, in fact.’

‘Going to a wedding doesn’t mean I’m agreeing to anything else.’

‘Darling, think about it. If you visit a bad restaurant, it doesn’t put you off food forever. You just choose another.’ Jumping up from her stool, she pulls my reluctant form from the bed and leads me to the seat she just vacated. ‘What is it you Americans say? You need to get back on the horse that threw you?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, tonight, you’re getting a whole new ride.’

I wonder if I was ever as brave as she is. Ever as sure about anything, I think, as I open my makeup bag when, leaning over my shoulder, Chas swipes the Charlotte Tilbury lipstick out of my hand.

‘Bond Girl,’ she murmurs, reading from the base of the golden tube. ‘There’s an idea. Let’s give you a pseudonym tonight . . . one with a Bond girl theme. You can be Holly Goodhead. That is, assuming you give good—’

‘Really?’ Through the mirror, I begin applying a perfectly winged stroke of liner. It’s strange how some women have problems applying the stuff, and others have problems keeping men.

‘If you’re not sure, I can call Sonia from today’s shoot. Did you see how she inhaled Nathan’s penis like a total champ?’

‘Nathan?’ I repeat. Chas nods. ‘The improbably named Nathan Cox?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘Not that his name sounds anything like naked cocks or anything?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it like that. That’s rather clever.’

‘Yeah, well I’m not sucking any cock, Nathan’s or otherwise.’

‘If you’re not happy being Holly Goodhead, you can always be Pussy Galore. Although that always makes me think of a woman with an overly large vagina.’

‘This is one of those times I wish you and I had a safe word,’ I reply, holding my head in my hands. ‘Boundaries, Chastity.’

‘Boundaries are meant to be tested,’ she replies, beginning to slick the berry shade of lipstick across her lips. ‘Or how else would we discover the true breadth of things we enjoy?’

‘Here, do it properly.’ I pass her the lip primer and brush, the tools of my old trade.

‘Ever the purist,’ Chas responds with a smile. ‘Is this the long-lasting stuff?’

‘Yeah, it’s really good,’ I begin, animated. The topic of makeup gets me a little excited—makeup is totally my spirit animal. ‘It doesn’t come off for hours.’

‘Unlike my aim for your knickers tonight.’

My shoulders slump as I eye her through the mirror, a sudden thought adding to my torment. ‘But what happens if Robin does show up?’ I swear I’ve seen him a couple of times out on the street, not that I’d tell Chas. She already worries about me enough.

‘If he does, fuck him. Only don’t,’ she adds quickly. ‘Or I will junk punch you both. Of course, I’ll have to find his first,’ she adds with a sly wave of the pinkie finger on her right hand.

I smile because, evil reasons. And she’s not exactly wrong.

‘But I don’t want to make a scene,’ I answer softly. Weddings might be an easy place to score, but not with your ex in the same room. I just couldn’t. And more to the point, I don’t really want to. ‘I don’t get why you’re so keen to go yourself.’

She might have been born into the Chelsea set, but she so doesn’t ascribe to being seen in the right places or hanging out with the right crowd. Just the opposite—she’s the posh girl with the porn company!

‘I’m just a little excited, I suppose. It’s not every day you get invited to the wedding of someone famous; someone whose picture you had hanging on your bedroom wall.’

‘Yet Robin never impressed you.’

‘Ginger was never my thing.’ She scrunches up her nose. ‘Bust Out, however, was my favourite band, and Chad, their front man, was my high school secret crush.’

‘Pity he’s getting married then, huh? You won’t get to kiss him for realz now.’ Chastity slides me a sly look, but she wouldn’t . . . would she?

‘I do think it’s acceptable, indeed appropriate, to kiss the groom congratulations.’

‘Depends on the use of tongues,’ I answer, askance.

‘I’ll keep it to a minimum,’ she teases. ‘Not too much depth unless you don’t do as you’re told, of course.’

‘Yeah, sure. A wedding hookup. I can do that.’ There isn’t a drop of sincerity in my tone. ‘Because I’m so responsive to blackmail. I could totally sue you for harassment in the workplace.’

‘I think you probably could, given what happened in Prague last week.’

‘I couldn’t sue you for that. Not for taking me to such a beautiful historic city. It’s not your fault that Sasha sneezed so hard she expelled a dildo from her body, and it nearly knocked me out.’

‘Oh, God,’ she says, taking a deep, shaky breath. ‘Don’t make me laugh. I’ll pee myself. I want you to know I risked life and limb and went into your room to find you a matching pair of shoes.’

‘Are you trying to say I’m a mess?’ Of course, she is. My life at the moment is one big mess.

‘You’re messy, not a mess. And if you’re not going to sue me for damages to your mental or physical health, or for harassment in the workplace, there’s only one thing left to do.’ Chastity picks up her phone as it pings. ‘And that’s find you a nice young man tonight, one to fill the void in your life. And by that, I mean your—’

‘Thank you!’ I yell, covering my ears. ‘That will do!’