Chapter 12 Emmy
Chapter 12
Jason Connor, died from YouTube.
Emmy
“HE DID WHAT? Hang on.”
The hotel bed squeaks as I plop cross-legged onto it. I minimize the screen with Peyton’s face and pull up YouTube. Oh snap! Peyton wasn’t exaggerating. There’s a video, and it’s bad. Really bad. It’s so painful to watch that I’m not sure if I’m looking at a video or having an attack of appendicitis.
He broke up with Margarita Ayala! Why would he do that? Why now? And on social media?
“Did you see it?” Peyton’s voice sounds young and high-pitched and a million miles away, which it might as well be.
“I see it. Oh, honey, the comments!”
“I know. Did you see what @SnarkierthanU said?”
I did, and it’s not something a preteen should be reading. I switch back to her screen and change the subject. “What did you do today?”
“Mom!” Peyton sticks her face right up in the phone’s camera. “We do not have time for small talk. If Jason Connor is as cool IRL as you say he is, you have to help him. He looks like a total douchebag.”
I cringe. “Where did you hear that word? Do you even know what that means?”
“Tía Josie, and no. But I know it’s bad.”
My gaze wanders to the window of my Manhattan Beach hotel room. It’s a decent hotel, but not fancy. Typical book tour accommodations. I have a view of the pool deck, at least.
“I don’t know if I can help him, sweetie.”
Peyton groans. “You have to! I can’t have my friends thinking my mom is in love with a douchebag. It’s embarrassing!”
“Stop saying ‘douchebag.’ And I’m not in love with him.”
“Mom, I know you.” She does. The last twelve years, we’ve pretty much grown up together. “Tell me you’ll fix this. Please?”
“Fine.” I sigh. “I’ll fix it.”
“Great! Thank you! I love you! You’re the best! Wanna do a quick TikTok?” She tilts her head to the side in that cute way of hers.
“Always!”
“‘Can’t Touch This’?”
“You bet.”
She gets the music going while I slide off the bed to my feet. When it starts, we launch into what’s basically a really fast Macarena with a drumroll and a John Travolta ending. It’s so fun that it instantly makes me happier. Anybody who is down on TikTok isn’t doing it right, and that’s my expert opinion.
“Good night, baby. Tell Josie I love her and thank her for taking such good care of you.” Normally, Peyton would be staying with my parents, but my mom joined this cruising club, and the two of them are currently floating somewhere off the coast of Greece.
“I will.”
We say goodbye, and a wave of loneliness floods through me. This is the longest I’ve ever been away from Peyton, and although I know she’s not a baby anymore and she’s as safe with Josie as she is with me, the sheer distance between us feels like it’s too much. Not just the physical distance, either. The distance between these two worlds. New Port Richey, Florida, versus Hollywood, California. Books and beaches and kid stuff versus glamour and glitz, photo shoots, and interviews. Is it wrong that I want both?
I sigh and browse through more of the comments on Jason’s post. They’re scathing. I consider calling him, but how freaking presumptuous is that? When he asked to exchange numbers today, he didn’t invite me to call him anytime I felt like it.
But he gave me his phone number and broke up with Margarita Ayala on the same day.
Stop it, Emmy! You’re a fool to think this has anything to do with you!
Although that’s what people are going to think, aren’t they, after our Vanity Fair photo shoot? That spread was sizzling hot. Jill’s text read something like: OMG you KILLED it, Emmy. More of that! In fact, I’m number five on the New York Times bestseller list now.
I browse my book’s hashtag, and sure enough, there’s a crap ton of buzz from my fans, mostly Go, girl tweets and swooning over the Vanity Fair photos. Since none of the photos Val snapped for me turned out like that, I’m chalking it up to the magic of Photoshop. Thank you, Photoshop, for validating me. When this is all over, I can stare at those photos and pretend I really had something with Jason Connor.
But he invited me to a cast party tomorrow! I’ll get a chance to meet the entire Lost Star crew, hang out with them—it’s way more than I imagined getting to do this trip. Why would he do that? He was so standoffish at the photo shoot. At least he was at first.
What if the breakup with Margarita did have to do with me? What if…?
No, Emmy, don’t go there. You’ll just be setting yourself up to be made a fool of again.
My swimsuit is hanging over the bathroom door, and I yank it down. There’s a really nice hot tub here inside a gazebo that nobody ever uses but me. A bottle of pinot grigio is chilling in my ice bucket, courtesy of Val, who treats me like my life is a L’Oréal Because You’re Worth It commercial. I hired him out of my own pocket after the last event. I had to put his fee on a credit card since the royalty checks haven’t started flowing yet, but Val helps keep me from looking like a mediocre social media influencer who’s trying desperately not to look like a mediocre social media influencer. That’s priceless.
I’ll just go simmer in 103-degree water and see if I can figure out how to help Jason Connor with his online presence. Social media is fickle. He can recover from this.
His loss is my gain, of course. The more he makes the news, the more I do, too, by association, but I made Peyton a promise. Besides, I don’t want to see him get canceled, poor guy. He doesn’t deserve that.
I pad across the pool deck and into the gazebo with my phone and a large Solo cup full of wine. Feet in the water, I pull up his contact info. One tap would call him. It’s such an audacious idea. Calling Jason Connor on the phone. Like we’re friends or something. Like we could ever be more.
My phone is in my hands, his number on the screen. I’m bulletproof, right?
No, that’s a lie. I’m far, far from it.
Before I can stop myself, I tap CALL .
It rings twice.
“Hello?”
My heart jumps into my throat, but like Lost Star season two, episode one taught us, time goes in only one direction, and it’s too late to take anything back now. “Jason, it’s Emmy.”
“Oh, hi. I thought that might be you.” He coughs. Ice tinkles in a glass. A TV drones in the background. “What’s up?”
“I’m sitting in the hot tub at the hotel.” For frack’s sake, what is wrong with me? I might as well have said, I’m lying naked in bed .
“Hang on a minute.”
The video call request comes through, and I tap ACCEPT . Suddenly, Jason Connor is there, on my phone screen, like it’s something normal. There are dark circles under his Gulf of Mexico eyes, but they still blow a crater in my moon.
“I’m on my third episode of 90 Day Fiancé ,” he says.
“Ouch.”
“It’s been a rough night.”
“I saw that.” I sink all the way into the water. I wonder how I look on his end. Probably with mascara smeared under my eyes, Val’s flat iron work frizzed by steam from the tub. Whatever. I can’t worry about that right now. He’s in a bad place. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What’s to say? I’m an idiot.” The background flops behind him, and the TV sound disappears. I’m guessing he’s lying on a sofa in his house. It’s strange to see him this way, just looking normal. Not dressed up or made up or “on.”
“Everybody’s an idiot sometimes. You haven’t cornered the market on that.”
He laughs dryly and takes a sip of his drink. “Maybe you don’t know this because, if you did, I wouldn’t be your ‘hashtag celebrity crush,’ but I have a bit of an image problem.”
I balance my phone against my rolled-up towel so I can kick my legs behind me in the tub. “I know it. I just don’t care about things like that.”
“Things like what?”
“Things people want me to see. I care more about how things really are.”
His brow furrows. “How do you know the difference?”
I dip my head back and wet my hair. I can tell he’s lying down now, holding the phone above him. Somehow it makes our conversation feel singularly intimate. For a minute, I forget I’m talking to movie star Jason Connor. I’m just talking to Jason.
“There’s more to you than what we all see in the interviews and film clips and paparazzi photos,” I say. “All your mistakes aside, you’re a good person.”
He rubs his forehead and winces. “Then why do I continue to make one terrible decision after another?” His voice cracks, and not for effect.
My heart lurches. “You don’t always. You did something really amazing today.”
He sniffs. “What was that?”
“You came all the way to Manhattan Beach and waited in line to invite me to a party.”
I love the half smile that fills up my screen. It’s one I haven’t seen before in memes. It’s just for me. “I did have to wait, like, twenty whole minutes.”
“See?” I grin back at him. “And you gave selfies to my fans, which was really sweet. By the way, I can help you with your social media image, if you want. It’s what I do for a living.”
“Really? How would you do that?”
I shrug. “It’s easy. We just post stuff that makes you look awesome rather than the stuff you post that makes you look like a jackass.”
“But the jackassedness comes naturally.”
“That’s where I come in.” I’m about to throw a few ideas at him, when I notice something. “Oh crap!”
His face on the screen looks truly concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“I wore my Fitbit into the Jacuzzi.” I peel it off and press the buttons. Sure enough, it’s toast. “That was dumb.” I throw it aside. “See, I told you you haven’t cornered the market on stupid.”
“What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?”
The question comes out of nowhere, and it sounds important, like the way I answer it matters. If I give him something shallow, I’ll lose the precarious trust we’re building. I take a deep breath. Even though I feel guilty saying it, I tell him the truth. “Getting pregnant at nineteen.”
“You’re a mom.” He says it without judgment.
I nod. “Peyton’s twelve. Don’t get me wrong, she’s the person I love most, and I’m grateful to have her, but she’s the reason I left LA. She’s why I gave up on my dreams.”
“What were your dreams?”
I hesitate. It’s the same question Beverly Shipley asked me in my Fresh Leaf Book Club interview back in New York, and I’m still not quite sure how to answer it. “You know, what you have.”
“You mean having everything I do and say scrutinized?”
“I mean the good parts. Like Lost Star . I’ve always wanted to be part of something like that.”
“Why did you have to give it up?”
I flip around in the tub and hold the phone over the bubbling water. “I couldn’t raise a baby on my own. Not at that age. Not that far from my support system and while I was going to school.”
He hesitates before going for it—the million-dollar question. “What about her father?”
I don’t know how much I’m willing to tell him. “It’s just the two of us.” As it turns out, not much.
“He didn’t want to be a part of her life?”
“Guess not.”
That’s a lie. I don’t know if Rhett Castle would have wanted to be a part of Peyton’s life. I never gave him the chance. Luckily, Jason doesn’t press.
“The dumbest thing I’ve ever done is get arrested for fighting. I was drunk. I was with this woman.”
My dashboard lights up like a ’90s rave. Oh to the crap. I read that police report. It’s the one I found.
“Her husband found out and came to take her home.”
I nod in acknowledgment at his image in the phone. This is all terribly wrong. I should interrupt him. Tell him I know. That I read the police report. That I put something like it in the book, and I’m sorry.
But I can’t bring myself to. I just sit there, frozen.
“It was stupid of me to fight him. I don’t even remember why I did it, but I do remember a lot about that night.” His eyes go glassy. “The seedy pool hall outside of Cincinnati—the Friendly Saloon, I think it was called. The pretty woman in a low-cut top plastered to my side. The front door swings open, and this Steve Carell–looking guy crosses the floor with his shirttails out, headed right for us, and he says angrily, ‘Let’s go, whatever-her-name-was,’ and she says nastily, ‘Go home, you’re just jealous,’ and I say idiotically, ‘Do you want to take this outside?’ Apparently, he did.”
He lifts off the couch long enough to take another sip of whatever he’s drinking. I don’t move. I don’t say a word. This is so personal. When I read this on a screen years ago, it didn’t feel this personal.
“Eventually, the cops showed up. They took my stuff and threw me in a cell reeking of vomit. To this day, I don’t understand how it happened, why I did it.”
Still, I say nothing. I am like a person with a gun to her head. Nothing I do is guaranteed to save me.
“Maybe I was just drunk,” he muses. “Maybe I was itching to use some of the martial arts skills they’d taught us for the show. Outside, after I’d turned this guy’s face into a cube steak, it was surreal. I remember marveling at how much my hand hurt. The red and blue police lights turning the sidewalk into a disco. The guy’s blue sedan double-parked in front of the bar. And the worst part?” He pauses for a long moment, as if rallying the confidence to finish. “Their kid. Their kid watching it all through the car window.”
I cringe. That detail wasn’t in the police report. His eyes are squeezed shut, like maybe if he closes them hard enough, he won’t have to see it replaying in his mind. His sigh is a long, loud crackle through my phone speaker.
“So, what do you think, Emmy? That story makes my epic breakup with Margarita look like America’s Funniest Home Videos , doesn’t it?”
“Maybe he was abusive?” I say half-heartedly.
Jason’s voice is far away and soft. “Nope, I don’t think so. He just loved her. He just really loved her. And I didn’t.”
My chest constricts like an imploding star. This thing I have done—putting that scene in the book—is even worse than I suspected. What I thought was just a police report of a young guy’s stupid, testosterone-filled mistake is Jason’s biggest shame, eating away at him. I wove that painful memory into a story and put it out there for everyone to see. When he discovers what I’ve done, he’ll hate me.
But how could he not know? They’re almost done filming the movie.
He snickers. “I bet my epitaph is going to read Jason Connor, died from YouTube .”
I manage a small laugh. Even without my Fitbit on, I can tell my heart rate is over a hundred beats per minute and rising. “Jason?”
“Hmmm?”
My voice shakes. “Have you finished reading Hashtag Celebrity Crush ?”
He makes an awkward emoji face, the one that’s basically a cylinder of gritted teeth. “I haven’t finished it. But I will. I promise—”
“Forget about that. What about the screenplay? Have you read that?”
“We didn’t have time for a big table read. And I only read the scenes for the next day. It’s kind of my process. TV actor thing.”
A little noise of relief bursts out of me. It’s not too late. There’s a chance I can fix this. “You know, in the time I’ve been here, I’ve only gotten to see one day of filming. I’d really like to see some more.”
The sentence is 100 percent true, but I feel like a liar saying it when my real intention is to corner Miles Gauthier, grab him by the lapels, and beg him to cut the bar scene.
Jason’s shoulders relax. “Of course! Why didn’t you say so before? Come to the set tomorrow. You can be my guest. Here, I’ll text you the address.” The video pauses as he switches apps. When he comes back, his eyelids close and stay that way for too many seconds—long, sexy blinks. I’m not beside him, but for a moment, I imagine I am. Instead of me in a hotel Jacuzzi and him on his couch, I see myself stretched out beside him on cool white sheets, able to reach out and smooth a runaway curl on his forehead, slide my hands under his shirt, open his mouth with mine. No secrets between us. No betrayals. All my feelings reciprocated. I pretend it’s something that could actually happen.
It’s getting far too hot in the tub. I stand up to cool off. When I check my phone again, his eyes are open, watching the water stream off my bare middle.
I lift the phone to face level. “I should let you sleep.”
“What? I’m wide awake.” His eyes are fighting the pull of sleep. It’s adorable, and gorgeous, and killing me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull any of this off—talking Miles into nixing the bar scene, fixing Jason’s social media presence, and keeping him from reading the rest of the book, all the while playing vixen for the rest of the world and wrangling my own feelings. But I have to try.
“Hey, Jason,” I bark, spurring him awake. “I think your epitaph’s going to read Jason Connor, died of mustard . There was an insane amount of mustard on that sandwich.”
His smile is slow and sleepy and only half there. “I love mustard. Can I pick you up for the party?”
Jason Connor picking me up in a fancy car for a celebrity party? Yes, please! “I’d love that.”
Dipping his chin down, he looks up and says, “Okay.” It’s the meme. He did it on purpose.
He sees that I recognize it. I’m grinning too hard to hide it. “Good night, Jason Connor.”
“Wait, wait, before you go…” His lips fill up the screen of my phone, and he makes a smooching noise. He’s given his phone a sloppy kiss. “That’s for you, Emmy Ellison, for choosing me.”
A warm zinging sensation flutters over me, like I imagine it feels when your spaceship is scanned by aliens with one of those humming sweeps of blue light. “I’ll always choose you, Jason Connor.”