Sweet Cheeks(79)
“Hayes.” And just like that, the sound of compassion in her voice tells me she just might not unravel when I tell her how she plays into all of this. Then again . . .
“Yeah. It was bad.” I think back to that phone call. To the frantic feeling over whether she was going to be okay. From disbelief to guilt wondering if it was my fault. “And of course I immediately felt responsible for being the tipping point because I kicked her out of the house. Those first few days were horrible and for the life of me, I have no idea how her attempt had been kept out of the press. I can’t imagine the number of greased palms and signed NDAs that her agent or manager or the damn studio for all I know, swooped in and used to keep everyone quiet. But they did. Until two days later when someone saw me heading into the hospital to check on her and started snooping around. I had no clue but somehow the studio found out. Their PR person, unbeknownst to me, decided to distract the snooper by diverting their attention to me.”
“The cheating story.” The way she says it, like she never believed it in the first place despite asking me, makes me feel a bit of relief.
Let’s hope that feeling lasts. Shit. Why the hell did I ever go along with this?
“Yeah. The story about me cheating on her. When I woke up and saw the tabloids and found out what was going on, you can bet your ass I chewed out the studio. I threatened and raged but the story already had a mind of its own and there was no stopping it by then. What was I supposed to do? Cause a scene? Admit to the press and in turn the backers I was part of the studio’s lies about Jenna’s drug use and now suicide attempt? At that point I was just as complicit as she was.”
“Which was just what the studio wanted.”
“Bingo. I walked right into that one. But how were my agent and I to know Jenna was going to take a bottle of pills and try to off herself? I had a twenty-million-dollar contract riding on this and obviously an emotionally fragile ex-girlfriend. I was f*cked in all the wrong kind of ways and it was no one’s fault but my own.” I look at Saylor and search for judgment in her eyes but find none. “So yeah, I let the PR company and the press paint her as the damsel in distress who had to take some time away from Hollywood after I cheated on and humiliated her. So I ignored the questions about what happened with us in interviews. Figured the less I said the better. It made me look like the * but it was better than telling more lies.”
“And of course women can forgive *s because they love the bad-boy vibe but they don’t forgive other women. They vilify them.”
“I never looked at it that way, but yeah, pretty much.” I blow out a breath and hate she’s about to find out firsthand just how bad the vilification can be.
“And so the I love you was more . . .”
She leads me into the statement, needing to hear me say what her eyes tell me she already infers. But I understand. If the situation were reversed, I’d probably feel the same way. Huh. Who am I kidding? I’d be pissed and demanding answers. Not standing there with admirable patience, listening to me make excuses for the woman who she has no idea just f*cked up her world.
“She’s a fragile head case, and I don’t want to ruffle her feathers. That’s why I said I loved you. Because I gotta admit, the longer this charade goes on, the more skeptical I am of her motives. I thought it was legitimate at first, but now? Now the special treatment and shitload of attention she’s receiving makes me think she’s feeding off all of this. That she couldn’t handle fading from the spotlight so she pulled this stunt—the “attempted suicide”—to get more of it. Of course, I played right into her hands. Everyone’s looking at her now, coddling her, paying attention to her. And it’s becoming more and more evident that we’ve all been had.”
“Why’d you agree to go along with it all?”
“Because I’m stupid?” My laugh sounds empty as I scrub a hand over my face and just shake my head at how ridiculous the situation is and how f*cking gorgeous Say is. “Because at that point I was so deep into it I became just as guilty for covering it up as she was. Maybe because I felt sorry for her and the pressure she must always be under to live up to Paul Dixon and his shelf-full-of-Oscar’s legacy. And maybe, selfishly, because it’s a damn good movie. It’s some of my best work to date and Jenna . . . off-screen she may be a mess, but on-screen? On-screen she’s a goddamn genius, and I think this movie has the blockbuster potential the studio thinks it has and then some. So yeah, of course the twenty-million-dollar paycheck I have riding on it is definitely motivation to just ride it out. Let it release into theaters and then walk away and wash my hands of her.”
“But how do they know the image they painted of you isn’t going to hurt the release of the film?”
“They don’t but the studio has already scheduled me into the ground for the next month so that I’m visible and smiling and showing I’m still the nice guy everyone thought I was. The one who still politely declines to speak about my very public break-up and any inaccuracies reported about it for the sake of I’m a gentleman and that’s a private matter.”
“The company line.”
“Yes.”
“Unbelievable. You have every right to be angry. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the studio has the power to make you . . . that she had the audacity . . . all of it.” She purses her lips and looks at me with eyes full of disbelief. Dread fills me as I wait for her to ask the question written all over her face. The one I wish I didn’t have to answer: “So what happened just now that made this escalate?”