***
I wish I could say that I awake slowly alongside the future father of my child, stretching lazily, legs flung over one another, beaming. I wish I could say that we stay melted in each other’s arms until we are covered in sunlight.
But the bedroom door cracks open with force, and I jolt up, clutching the sheets to my chest instead. My heart is hammering. My hair is sideways, and my face is half-mushed into whatever shape the pillow indented into it.
My first genuine, semi-solid thought—because it is early in the morning—is that this is some winged, fantastical dream version of Jared, here to kill us both.
My nightmares steadily loosen their grip and I blink. No... no. It’s not Jared.
It’s Candace.
She stands in the bedroom doorway, proud and mildly judgmental, which doesn’t really mean anything. That’s kind of how she always looks. She’s dressed professionally, but that doesn’t mean that there will be filming today...I hope. Because I’m on the set totally nude with the bachelor.
Brilliant, self. Turn off the camera in the headboard and then forget to sneak out before morning. Genius!
Candace sighs. “I figured,” she mutters. “Come on, Roxy. You can’t be here.”
I throw a leg out of bed but feel an iron grip clamp down on my hip. I glance over my shoulder to see Blake glaring at Candace with deadly dominance.
“She stays,” he commands.
“Really, it’s okay,” I peep. I don’t want to be the reason for a showdown between these two. Someone would die.
“Come with me, Roxy,” Candace says again. “Loverboy won’t miss you too long.”
Blake slowly loosens his hold on me and allows me to slip from beneath the blankets. I hurry into clothes, and Candace turns her gaze respectfully toward the wall as I dress. Blake glares after us, weighing whether or not to follow, but lets us go.
Candace guides me down the hall of the mansion, then down the stairwell. “I know I can’t keep you two apart,” she sighs.
“No,” I agree.
“I really wish you two jackasses could have waited,” Candace mutters. “Did you have to get pregnant right in the middle of my goddamn season?”
My cheeks color. “I know.” We are jackasses. We could have waited. He didn’t have to plunge into me raw the first chance he got. Even now, though, weeks later, the memory of it still sends a shudder down my spine. No regrets. “But I wasn’t the one who told the press I was pregnant. I didn’t tell anybody, except my roommates.”
“The homeless ones?”
“They’re not homeless. They live with me.”
“It’s practically the same thing. Total financial despair. Never trust poor people with valuable information, Roxy.” Candace pinches her nose and tries to relax. “Well, what’s done is done. This completely avoidable disaster has happened, and there’s nothing to do now but damage control. Walk with me, Roxy.”
She continues doing breathing exercises, reminding me of Blake, as we march into the production building and toward her office. “Did you learn that from Blake?” I wonder.
“Lamaze,” Candace lies. I’ve never heard her breathe like that a day in her life. We enter her office, and she gestures for me to sit. “Here’s what we’re going to do!” Candace announces excitedly, sauntering over to her side of the desk. “You’re going to deny that you are pregnant. You don’t look pregnant. For all you know, you’ll lose the baby anyway.”
I gasp. “Candace!”
“What?” she blurts, blinking at me. “It’s true! Anyway, deny the rumors, say that you and Blake are good friends, and you’ll always treasure what you had in Greece, et cetera. Very classy. The paparazzi will lose interest in you if you become irrelevant, so stay the fuck away from this set, and stay the fuck away from Blake in every respect. I’ll keep him away from you, if you can uphold your end of the bargain.”
“I don’t know that I can,” I answer in all honesty. “I think I’m in love with him, Candace.”
Candace scowls at me like I just told her that I think there is a possibility that gravity is just a shared hallucination. “You don’t need to stay away from him for-ev-er,” she clarifies loudly. “Just stay away from him for the rest of my goddamn show. How about a little respect for our attempts to run a serious business here? Right?”
“Right,” I admit. This place was my paycheck not too long ago.
But I guess nowhere is my paycheck now.
In fact, unless I actually start asking Blake for child support while I’m still pregnant, I’m not going to be able to make rent.
“So, stay away from the set, stay away from Blake, deny your pregnancy, and give me another month to wrap this up. Then you’re free to hold naked photo shoots with Time Magazine, or whatever your heart so desires.”
“I can do that if you give me something,” I wager.
“Of course. Of course, you can. All right. What do you need?” she asks.
“I need you to help me get another job,” I tell her. “Mr. Montana fired me after all this insane press coverage. He said you might be able to find something else for me, and I think he was right.”
Candace tsks. “I don’t know,” she says. “No one wants the eye of a media storm on their staff. Not him. Not me. No one in Hollywood Studious.” Her shoulders slump. “But that is what we’re stuck with. Let me think. I’ve got to dredge up all your skillsets from memory now.” As she paces, she opens a cabinet and flicks a file to me. “That’s the folder that Jared might have seen, by the way. You should take a look at it and see if there’s anything you want to change or protect or whatever. Again, might have seen, and we’re not even sure that it was Jared. The man in our footage is masked.”
I skim the information and, when I hit the line that says ADDRESS, my heart suddenly loses about twenty pounds of strain.
“The address is outdated,” I breathe. “This is the address where I lived for the first year that I worked here.” My glowing eyes meet Candace’s. “He can’t find me with this.”
Candace can’t smother her own grin. “Thank god,” she says. “Thank fucking god.” She taps her desk thoughtfully and adds, “You know, there’s this indie bar downtown, and it’s got low lights and lots of older people, really chill lounge,” Candace suggests. “They have live music. You ought to apply down there. It’s a completely different atmosphere, and they’ve taken in a lot of strays over the years. I’ll talk to the owner for you. Put in a good word.”