Xander

“Here, I found some Jack Daniels in a kitchen cupboard,” Elsie says and hands me a tall glass of Jack and Coke. I take it from her, and down half of it in one gulp.

It pisses me off that I have to think about any of this, but Luna hasn’t done the retraction and her deadline is up.

I was really enjoying myself at the bar until the deadline passed with no hint of a retraction. Hanging out with Elsie and her friends for the past two days has only made one thing clear. I hate everyone I know.

Elsie climbs onto the sofa beside me, her legs curled up underneath her and her body facing mine. She puts her hand on my shoulder and rubs it, soothing the tension in my muscle.

“So, Luna and your dad are an item?” She asks.

“No one and my dad is an item. He doesn’t work that way. Women are things to be screwed, nothing more.”

“So, what is she thinking? Doesn’t she think of him as a father?”

“You would think so but like I said before, they raised her to think that her only value was as a sex object. I thought she got past all that when she got her show, but the ratings have been dropping and maybe she felt vulnerable and my father saw that and took advantage of it, I don’t know. The more I think about it the less I understand it,” I say and take another mouthful of my drink.

“It seems like you’re more upset about Luna than you are about the media,” Elsie says, nuzzling her head against me.

“Yep.”

I fucking am. Ever since we were young teens, I’ve protected Luna from my father’s friends. I thought I’d fended them all off, even if I did have to break that one guy’s nose. It never even occurred to me that she’d need protecting from my own father.

If I didn’t have enough reasons to hate him before, I despise him now.

“It’s not your fault that the two of them are having an affair.”

I shake my head, “It’s not an affair. My mother would be well aware of the situation and either think it’s great or be too scared of my father leaving her and taking his money with him to do anything about it.”

“Do you think Luna’s parents know?”

“Of course they do. Her dad was the first person I told to try to get him to interfere, but he laughed and said it had been going on for a while now. I swear to God the dickwad was jealous of my father.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said your family was messed up. Honestly, I think you have every right to cut them from your life. Who cares about Christmas and birthdays?” Elsie says, wrapping her arm across the front of my chest and squeezing.

My breath is heavy as I consider her words. “You’re right. But it turns out all the people I’ve surrounded myself with are assholes. Not a single one of them would help me talk any sense into Luna because they were all too fucking afraid they’d lose their chance of ever being on Lunatics again. I’d basically be walking away from my entire life.”

My throat tightens and I force another gulp of Jack and Coke down it.

“Sometimes fresh starts are good,” Elsie says, her voice soft and unconvincing.

There’s so much I want to say to Elsie. I want to tell her that my entire life has fallen apart and she caught me from crashing out. I want to tell her that I didn’t think people like her really existed. I want to tell her that she’s ripped my heart away from the people who don’t really care about me and taken it for herself. Instead I say, “You’re good,” and drag my fingers through her soft hair.

She straightens herself into a kneeling position and puts her face in front of mine, her eyes probing mine and says, “Thanks for the faint praise. Good, is that a better or worse thing to say about someone then nice?”

Even now I can’t help smiling because of her. “You’re too good to be true.”

“Better.”

“I’m better with actions than words,” I say and brush my lips across hers. An electric current sparks with our contact but for once in my life I only want to talk. I need to figure out what to do next. I have to, to protect Elsie from the internet trolls and to get the paparazzi to leave her alone.

I pull her body back against mine and hold her tight against me.

“You are very good with actions, I’ll give you that,” Elsie says.

“My actions with Luna didn’t get me too far. All that got me was this media bullshit.”

“It led to meeting me.”

“That’s true. I’ll be sure to thank my father for it,” I say, smirking.

“I’m still trying to figure out how your father fits into the media scandal. You told me before that you did this for Luna’s ratings but what’s that got to do with your father?”

I exhale sharply, wanting to tell Elsie everything, however much I have to force myself. “I walked in on them at a party. Luna was wearing a strap-on and whipping my father. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Thankfully I was drunk. I don’t think I could’ve handled that sober.”

“I imagine seeing your father getting pegged would be.”

“Nah, not because of that but because I’d failed Luna. I’d failed to protect her and when I went ballistic, she sided with my father.”

“Maybe she’s happy doing whatever she’s doing with him,” Elsie says softly.

“She doesn’t know any better, he’s groomed her her whole life.” I down the rest of my drink and plunk the glass on the table.

“There’s nothing you can do if adults don’t want to see things for what they are.” Elsie gets off the sofa and takes my empty glass to the kitchen.

Her back is to me as she pours me another drink and words start flowing from me, “My father called me a loser for pretending to be Luna’s boyfriend but not having sex with her. That made me a massive failure in his eyes. Even though I was drunk, everything suddenly became very clear. I was never anything to my father. No one is. His whole life is just about him and his entertainment and whatever gets him off. I yanked the whip from Luna’s hand and whipped him as hard as I could. Luna was screaming and crying and trying to stop me, but my arm just kept thrashing him until he started crying like a fucking baby.”

Elsie finishes making my drink but stays at the counter, her back to me. “That’s crazy. What happened?”

I can’t tell if she’s staying in the kitchen because she’s horrified by my whipping story or because she realizes it makes it easier for me to talk. “Lots of screaming and yelling and a huge three-way argument. All I cared about was getting Luna away from him, but nothing worked. I told them I was fed up with both of them and that I was walking away from Lunatics. Luna had a full-on meltdown, saying the ratings were bad and that she was going to lose her show, so it ended up with me consoling her and trying to calm her down.”

She turns around, my drink in her hand and says, “And she came up with the idea of the pegging media story to save the show?”

“That was all my father’s idea.”