Faking It(52)

I had a bottle in my hand. I threw it against a wall. The smashing sound registered dimly, as if I had nothing to do with it. “Who said that?” I said.

“Said what, champ?” said James, appearing at my elbow like a summoned genie.

“Who said that about America? About the soldiers?” Or did I say butchers? Everything was starting to run together. I had that sinking feeling of watching a disaster unfold in slow motion, and the even worse realization that I was the cause of it all.

Things got wild after that. The less said the better. But I didn’t realize just how bad it had been until the next morning when I woke up to a text from Alyssa. “Sorry. Dropped my phone in a puddle and couldn’t get it replaced until last night. Looks like you had a busy evening.”

There was nothing else except a link to Youtube. I didn’t click on it. I called her immediately.

“Hey,” she said softly.

“Hi Alyssa. How was your interview? Is everything going…” I trailed off, not wanting to sound like an idiot, just wanting to get to it.

“Braden, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to see you again,” she said. “I’ll run your interview, and I wish you well, but this isn’t going to work. I’m sorry.”

She hung up before I could say anything.

I was left there in a room I didn’t recognize—it turned out that it was the hotel next to the one I had flipped out in—with the link to that youtube video. After what felt like an eternity, I clicked on the link.



Chapter 9



I had just wrapped up the interview with the American sumo. He was, incidentally, as adorable as he was formidable and enormous. No diaper, either. It was one of the more fascinating athlete stories I had heard. Obsessions are always interesting, and to be elite at anything is to traffic in obsession. The point where it tips into pathology is what separates the psychos from the driven-but-not-quite-as-nuts. The interview had been a smash and I knew it was going to do some serious work for me. By the time I finished there was a message from my dad, wanting a report. I called him and gave him the recap, then told him I had to get out of there and eat. What I really meant was I was dying to call Braden. I knew he’d been messaging me but I had been so busy I could barely breathe.

Then I tripped, my phone flew out of my hand, and it managed to land in the only puddle on the entire street. It hadn’t even been raining. I pulled it out of the puddle. The screen flickered for a moment before dying, taking my hopes of a conversation with Braden with it.

I walked to the hotel and explained the situation to the concierge. They sent someone out to get me a new phone but didn’t guarantee a timeframe. My dad had sprung for the nicest hotel for me, of course, the kind of hotel where they’d go get you a new phone if you asked nice.

In my room, I couldn’t decide between napping and getting online to see if Braden was there. He was in an intense training block, so I didn’t expect to see him online. I was right about one part of it: he wasn’t logged in to Skype or any of the chat services we had used.

But he was on the Internet all right. In fact, he was all that anyone could talk about.

When I saw the headline to the video—BRADEN DEAN TRASHES HOTEL FULL OF BEAUTIES!!!—I couldn’t breathe. All I had to do was close the browser. I didn’t have to watch it.

I pushed play. Maybe it took me a second to decide, maybe a year, but I pushed play, telling myself that I wouldn’t cry.

The first shot of the video showed Braden laughing, head thrown back, a gorgeous blond in a red dress squirming around on his lap, both of them sloshing their drinks all over. Then Braden snapped to attention and started barking at someone off screen. The video shifted to a confused looking man at the bar. The shot showed that the entire lobby was full of the beautiful people. What was Braden doing there?

Suddenly he was in the guy’s face, demanding a slurred apology for something. He was bellowing at the top of his lungs, but I could barely understand a word he said. A guy in a suit was trying to calm him down. Braden yelled something like “Stay out of it, James,” and then he took a swing at the guy. Fortunately, he was so drunk that the guy had moved by the time Braden threw the punch. But he connected with one of the bottles on the bar, which shattered.

There was a horrible shot of Braden looking down at his bleeding hand in the seconds before he erupted. Well, erupted might be an insult to volcanoes. This was big. It was almost like he was possessed. Mad, molten, embarrassing. The video goes on for several minutes. He tips over a couch. He throws bottles. The women in the jeweled dresses scatter, screaming. Of course, whoever was filming it wasn’t the only one. There were so many videos out there, and so many comments.

I could only imagine what the feedback on my interview with Braden was going to be. Maybe I wouldn’t even be able to run it now. I knew what dad was going to say. “Cut ties immediately.” And behind it, there would be an “I told you so.” Of course, in fairness to my sometimes domineering dad, he had told me so.

I had packed a few Ambien for the trip but had been so exhausted at the end of every day that I hadn’t needed any. But I took one that night, vowing that I wouldn’t say anything to Braden or my dad until I had slept on it and had some time to think.

I slept deep and dreamlessly, but I didn’t wake rested or calm. Tranquility seemed to be a word that only applied to people who weren’t involved in any way with Braden. Maybe now that included me. A million feelings and thoughts battled in my head. I was so furious with him, and so disappointed. But the second I would think about how he had let me—and himself—down, it would be replaced with one of the many, many thoughts about the things he had done to me, or I had done to him, and how intoxicated we had been on each other. Or I would think about his vulnerability in that first interview.