Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(74)

“Not to you. But I was the last one you were with there, and that was mine. I was the girl they talked about, now I’m being replaced by what? A nanny? How am I supposed to show my face at Warren’s come Christmas? All them feeling sorry?”

“Wait a minute—”

“You don’t know people. You don’t know what a star you are there. You don’t have any idea what they all think. Now I have to quit or the talk is going to burn my ears straight off.”

“Were you telling everyone we were together? That’s a lie.”

“They all asked when you were gonna wake up and marry me, and what was I supposed to say?”

“That you can do better.”

“That’s a lie.”

She could do a ton better than me, but instead of hanging my argument on her intrinsic value, which would have saved the friendship, I got more aggressive.

“And saying I was waiting to marry you isn’t a lie?”

“Don’t you talk to me about lies, Bradley Sinclair.”

Her arm moved and the screen flicked to black.

I shut the computer. I was shaking because she and a few others protected a lie I told every day.

I stood up to get away from the computer. I depended on her friendship and support, and she’d depended on me for hope. Having removed the hope from her life, I would have to live without the friendship and support.





CHAPTER 55


BRAD


Any fourth-grader will tell you lies are like snowballs rolling down a hill. But I was told early on that if I was honest about my dyslexia, no one would hire me. I’d be too much trouble. It was hard for me to manage on-the-fly script changes. I couldn’t read dialog without struggle.

If someone read it to me and I repeated it, I could learn it easily, but I was no one in the business. I was broke, inexperienced, anonymous. One of a few million flowing in and out of the city every year. Casting directors were looking for reasons to disqualify talent so they could narrow down to the winner and move on to the next. Dyslexia made me unemployable.

So when I had auditions, I recorded someone else reading the sides and listened until I had it. Paula did it first, Michael did it when he was in town, and then Paula again. I trusted them to keep it under wraps. And when I got my first full-length feature, I still didn’t tell the director. I wanted to just do the work. Then I’d tell them.

But I got my next picture before shooting had wrapped on the first, and I didn’t want to lose that.

So, there we were.

“And here we are,” I said to my father on the front porch. Almost everyone had left. Cara was with Mom and Susan in the kitchen. Nicole and her cousins were watching TV. Dad sat in the aluminum and blue plaid chair he always sat in, and I was on the swing. Our beers were mostly empty and warm as a hand, but we held them like security blankets. “I’m really good at memorizing. And I can flow with changes on just a few repeats. But f*ck if I didn’t lean on Paula. I don’t even know if I have a flight to Thailand. I have forty messages on my phone from the preproduction team, and all I want to do is sit on the porch and drink beer.”

“You’ll figure it out. You were always real smart.”

“Is that why everyone called me retarded?”

A spark and zzt came from the blue bug zapper that hung from the ceiling beam.

“We don’t use that word no more.”

“Never took you for PC, Dad.”

He shrugged and put the bottle to his lips with his three-fingered hand. “Things change. If you don’t get on the train, it just leaves without you.”

“I liked the way things were.”

Zzt. The humidity was cloying, thick, a heavy density against me.

“God doesn’t care what you like, but he will send you what you need to figure it out. Like this girl you brought. She helps you. We can see that. You needed her and God sent her.”

“Yeah.” I tapped my bottle on the edge of the swing.

“And you love her.”

“No. Jesus Christ, Dad.”

“Watch your mouth. That particular train hasn’t left the station.”

“Sorry.” I felt as if I was ten all over again, rolling my first cuss around my mouth before letting it fly. “I was surprised you said it.”

“I know you live different out there. You all have your nannies and staff for your family and handle the career yourself. We always knew Paula wasn’t your future, no matter what she said or didn’t say. You came home one Christmas with her, and all you did was work. But this one.” He jerked his thumb inside. “You love this girl no matter how much you cuss our Lord over it.”

I don’t know what made me think I could hide anything from my parents. These are people who found out I was cutting school even though my grades were no worse whether I went or not. Neither Buddy nor Arnie ratted me out. Mom and Dad knew just because they knew.

“I do, and I have no idea how to make her mine.”

“You could start by telling her you love her.”

“You have no idea how complicated it is.”

He planted his feet wider and leaned back, putting the beer to his belly.

“How complicated could it be?”

“She’d have to stop doing what she loves. So what, right? She’d just . . . what? Take care of Nicole because she’s my daughter? And if it doesn’t work out, what then? Nicole loses her. I lose her. She loses her career. She loses her anonymity. I can’t be with her and protect her at the same time. But I have to be with her. I have to. She’s like glue. She holds everything together.”