Chapter Twenty-Four
“You’re not…you’re not angry at me…are you?” she asked him tentatively after a while of silence, sniffling and wiping at her sore cheeks and eyes.
Rico placed his hands on her shoulders and slowly helped her back up to a sitting position so that he could look seriously into her eyes. “Baby, of course I’m not. I’m angry at him. What he did was sexual harassment.”
“I…well…I maybe wouldn’t go that far,” she said tentatively.
But Rico held firm. “It was! And we need to go public about it. I’m so sorry that you’re gonna have to share your story again but…imagine if he does this to other young actresses? In fact, he probably already has.”
“Yeah…he probably has,” Ashleigh agreed. “But what’s the point in going public? No one else has come forward so it’s just my word against his, and he’s the most famous producer in Hollywood. I’m just some runner and wannabe actress. No one is gonna believe me at all.”
“But I’ll be there at your side, Ash,” Rico gave her a small, encouraging smile, reaching up and brushing his thumb over her cheek. “My friends and my co-stars will believe me, and in turn, they’ll believe you.”
Ashleigh bit her lip and looked away as she considered it, then asked quietly, “You really think I should?”
“Definitely,” he nodded. “And I’ll be with you the whole time. You’re not doing this alone, baby.”
She blushed a little. She liked it when he called her baby.
“Alright,” she quietly agreed. “We’ll do it.”
And he was right. She wasn’t alone, and at no point did she feel like she was. Rico made sure of that.
The first thing he did was call up his main co-stars, some of whom were also fairly big Hollywood names, although admittedly not as big as him. And straight away it was, “I have something to tell you about Francis.”
“I.” Not “Ashleigh.” He took responsibility for telling the tale, so that Ashleigh didn’t have to, and initially, he kept her name out of it.
“Some allegations have emerged regarding Francis, and I need to speak to everyone about it before we start filming again tomorrow.”
A meeting was arranged at Rico’s lavish hotel room suite a few blocks away that lunchtime.
Word had spread, thanks to Rico and his other co-stars, who had helped him place calls and get in touch with other cast and crew members, and they ended up with seventeen people crammed into his room that lunchtime.
Suddenly it didn’t seem so large and lavish anymore, and suddenly Ashleigh didn’t feel so alone anymore either.
She could have cried with joy. She felt so protected and safe already and they hadn’t even begun to discuss anything.
Rico had ordered up platters of sandwiches, snacks and drinks from the restaurant for everyone’s lunch, and although it wasn’t a party, Ashleigh felt in a surprisingly jubilant mood over the whole thing, especially when Rico clinked a spoon against a glass to quieten everyone down and began to speak. She stayed close to him the whole time, literally hanging off his arm. If people hadn’t already been wondering about the closeness of their friendship before, they certainly would now, but Ashleigh didn’t care anymore, and it looked like Rico didn’t either.
“The reason I’ve called you all here today, and I’d like to thank so many of you for coming, by the way,” he began, “is that some very serious allegations of sexual harassment have emerged regarding Francis Romero, and I felt we needed to discuss them before we went back to set tomorrow.”
“What happened?” someone called out.
“Yesterday, Ashleigh went to an audition… he undid his goddamned pants and basically, in not so many words, told her she could get the part really easily if she did something for him…”
There were a few gasps, then suddenly Ashleigh found her confidence and spoke up.
“That wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, that was just the culmination of it all,” she explained. “He’s been making inappropriate comments, looking at me in a way that makes me feel really uncomfortable, flirting with me, touching my arm and my leg and stuff like that…”
“He’s done that to me too,” one of the costume girls spoke up.
“Yeah, and me,” mumbled one of the other actresses.
There was a general murmur of consensus around the room as more people began to speak up and come forward, other girls who’d had problems with him, who had felt uncomfortable or harassed from his behavior.
“Sometimes I don’t even want to come into work,” one of them admitted.
“Yeah, me too,” agreed someone else. “The film isn’t worth all the hassle of having to deal with his crap.”
“He’s a creep!”
Rico and Ashleigh looked at each other in amazement, and he smiled at her, leaning in and kissing her on the cheek.
“See?” He murmured near her ear. “I told you they’d believe us. And I’m proud of you for speaking up.”
She blushed a bit and found his hand with hers, intertwining their fingers, then Rico raised his other hand for calm, trying to speak up over the din, talking like some motivational speaker at a political rally.
“I propose…that tomorrow morning, on the set, we stage a walk out. To show him we’re not going to accept this kind of behavior. Then we go to the press, and tell them everything that’s been happening! And we expose this guy for the predatory creep he really is! What do you say?”
Everyone cheered, the motion seconded and the wheels set in motion for the downfall of Francis Romero.