Chapter 23
Lily was so disturbed by what she had found out that she wanted nothing more to do with Dorian or anyone connected with him, even if it meant forgoing Franklin’s sexy convertible. She thanked him for bringing her to the bookstore and insisted she would find her own way home.
“Everything okay?”
“Absolutely. Thanks.” She felt sorry that someone as nice as Franklin had somehow been sucked into Dorian’s evil empire.
It’s all about money, she thought ruefully as she climbed into the back of her reasonably priced and decidedly unsexy rideshare.
She was cheered by the sight of her own cozy guesthouse. She hoped that Nicola would be home by now so she could unburden herself of this awful new knowledge about Dorian’s underhandedness.
“Nicola?” she called out as she opened the door.
She was answered by silence, followed by a thump, a strange rustling, and a giggle coming from upstairs. “Are you home?”
“Yes!” Nicola called back thinly, then dissolved into giggles. “No!”
“There’s nobody here!” called out … Wilson. From Nicola’s bedroom. At four o’clock in the afternoon.
Please no! Lily gritted her teeth. But yes, this was really happening.
Within seconds, Nicola was on her way down the stairs, tying on a robe, smoothing back extreme bed hair, and assuring Lily that it wasn’t what it looked like.
And then Wilson descended soon after, with his shirt completely undone, and suggested they all have a drink and talk about this like adults.
“There is nothing to discuss,” protested Lily, but there was no escape.
Wilson and Nicola insisted on discussing at great length (while fondling each other’s hair, arms, and faces) how very attracted to each other they were and this didn’t mean they loved Lily any less.
In the end, Lily found the only way to get through this horrid conversation was to stand on the stairs, poised for flight, and keep saying “Okay.” When Wilson was sufficiently satisfied that no, she wasn’t hurt, and yes, she was happy for them both, he finally left the guesthouse on the condition that Nicola join him the second she was ready because they were going out to celebrate their one-day anniversary.
Lily turned to her friend with her eyes blazing. Now it was Nicola’s turn to try to escape. But Lily chased her down.
“Wilson? You have scorned him this whole time!” she accused.
“I have not,” Nicola protested. “You have.”
“How could you?”
“He likes me.”
“That’s news; last week he was in love with me.”
“He wasn’t serious about you.”
“He gave a pretty good impression of it!”
“But he is about me and you’d better start being happy about it because this is long-term.”
“We’re going home next week.”
“I’m not.” Nicola stuck her chin out. “He loves me and I love him and he’s offered me a job.
Work experience. It’s called interning, look it up.
Wilson’s going to look after me, then when the production moves to Australia, they’ll give me a proper job.
And you know what, I don’t even care if they don’t!
Because this is exactly what I want—an opportunity, a ticket out of high school, out of Bready-Set-Go, out of Pippi Beach! I deserve this!”
“But … Wilson?”
“Just because you don’t want him doesn’t mean I can’t have him!”
“But you don’t want him either!”
“Yes I do!”
And Nicola said it with such conviction, and such hurt pride, that Lily had to stop arguing and believe her.
“Okay,” Lily said. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
In the silence that followed, Lily felt their entire friendship collapse in on itself.
This was Nicola, her best friend, whose volatile, impulsive heart had always been in the right place.
Not anymore. Lily could understand why Nicola might want to take advantage of Wilson and vice versa, but she couldn’t respect either of them for it.
“We’re going out. I’m borrowing your green dress,” sulked Nicola.
“Fine.”
Lily sat on her bed with her eyes shut and her headphones on until she was sure Nicola had gone.
Waves of emotion surged through her. As if she needed any more confirmation that the world revolved around money.
At least this afternoon she had believed that Dorian’s hateful, transactional view of relationships was something confined to his world, that it couldn’t touch hers.
And now here was her very best friend, with whom she had spent a good part of every day for the last five years, selling herself for social and financial gain.
It was nauseating. She wanted to call Juliet but hesitated, unsure whether she could control herself in her current state of indignation.
She’d be sure to blab what she’d found out about Casey and she couldn’t bear for her cousin to know what he and Dorian thought of her.
As this went through her mind, her phone dinged.
Are you busy?
It was Dorian. Ugh. Of all people, the one she least wanted to see. She was just about to text back “YES” when her phone dinged again. I’m out front. Do you have a minute?
Out front? What, he’s dropping by unannounced now?
She looked out the window. At the end of the driveway, beyond the tree canopy and past the gate, there was Dorian’s car and Dorian himself.
She was about to text some excuse but was overcome by a wave of rage.
How dare he? How dare he be here and put her in the position of feeling like she had to lie to maintain her right to be undisturbed by an antisocial movie star?
As it happened, she was not busy and she did have a minute—to give him a piece of her mind.
She stomped down the stairs, out the door, and straight down the driveway to the gate.
“Yes?” she challenged him through the bars.
“May I come in?”
This momentarily confused her. But whatever confrontation they were going to have, it was probably better not to have it on the street.
She opened the gate, turned, and led the way back up the driveway to the guesthouse. But there was no way she was asking him to sit down.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Franklin told me you seemed unwell.”
“No.”
“He said you just dashed off.”
“I wanted to come home.”
“Right. Here, home.”
“Well, home home as well, actually,” she admitted.
For the first time since she had arrived in the States, she felt homesick. The admission moved her and she no longer felt so very capable of telling Dorian what she really thought. She didn’t even feel able to refuse permission when he asked to sit down.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I understand you’re leaving next week.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
What? Was this some kind of nasty hidden camera show? That was what Wilson had said! Lily was too shocked to reply. Dorian continued.
“You must know that.” He stood up again and paced.
“I just keep thinking about you leaving and for some reason I can’t bear it.
I know it’s ridiculous. I mean, I hardly know you, you’re straight out of school, you don’t know what you’re doing with your life, you live in this bizarre beach commune, your mother’s a cleaner.
” It seemed he could barely pronounce the word, it was so strange to him.
“My life was perfectly fine before you came along; I certainly don’t need the complications of a relationship.
And yet—the thought of never seeing you again just makes me miserable.
” He stopped and looked deeply into Lily’s incredulous eyes. “Don’t go. Stay here.”
Lily was dumbstruck. How could this be happening to her? Again and so soon? Was she exuding some kind of desperate sex appeal? Did she look like she needed a boyfriend?
“Or stay in a hotel somewhere, I don’t mind, I’ll pay for it,” Dorian went on.
The mention of money jolted Lily back to herself.
No. This was not her fault. A certain kind of person just assumed that a woman would fall at his feet the moment he looked at her.
That she ought to be in a constant state of patient readiness that would swell to gratitude if chosen.
It was despicable. She had done nothing to encourage Dorian, she had never wanted his attention, and she was under absolutely no obligation to protect his feelings. He’d clearly given no thought to hers.
“You can travel back to Australia with me in September,” he went on.
“No,” she said.
“No?” Dorian echoed. He seemed genuinely confused. “To the travel? Or the hotel?”
“No to all of it! No to you!”
Dorian took a step back, as if slapped. “Are you serious?”
“Are you?”
“Yes!” He slowed down, as though to explain something rather complicated. “I know it’s bonkers, I know it can’t possibly work. I’ve done everything I could to get you out of my mind, talk myself out of this. And yet here I am. Asking you to be with me.”
He took a step closer and raised his hand to her cheek. She took hold of it and was somewhat surprised at its warmth and softness, but she was way too angry to care about that or how good he smelled up close. She snatched his hand away.
“You should have asked earlier and saved yourself some trouble. The answer is no,” she said with cold fury.
He returned her anger with a fiery flash of his eyes. “May I ask why?”
“Because I don’t like you, Dorian! And by the sounds of it, you don’t like me much either!”
“Were you not listening to me?”
“Oh, I was listening. You said: ridiculous, bonkers”—she counted on her fingers as her outrage swelled— “this couldn’t possibly work, you really don’t want to be here, you don’t want a relationship, and my mother’s a cleaner. Like that’s relevant.”
“I’m only saying—”
“I know what you’re saying. That I’m different. But you like me anyway. Is that supposed to make me feel special? Chosen? Because it doesn’t; it makes me feel sick.”
She expected Dorian to retort, try to convince her that it wasn’t true, but he just looked surprised and then furious.
“I know I’m different,” she went on. “I’m different because I don’t want your approval and I don’t care what you think! I have zero respect for you, Dorian Khan. You’ve shown time and again that all you care about is money, your career, and yourself, nothing and no one else.”
“What?” he spat.
“Don’t act so surprised,” she went on, vaguely conscious that she was going further than she intended, but her rage was too hot to hold back now. “Alex told me everything.”
“Alex? Alex King?”
“Yes. Remember him?”
“You want to talk about him now?”
“Just someone you trampled over on your way to the top.”
“Alex King is a liar.”
“He’s my friend.”
“Oh, he’s great at making friends. Not so good at keeping them. He will cheat you and lie about it to your face and then ask you for money.”
“You ruined his career!”
“Me? I did everything I could to save it!”
“No you didn’t!”
“He was my best friend! I paid his rent, I did his laundry. When I booked Dan Danger, I felt bad for him, I really did, we were the final two. Could have gone either way. So after a few years, when I could, I got him a role. In a small indie, but a good role. And what does he do? Asks for more money, demands more scenes, then he turns up drunk, behaves like a total jerk on set, and blames me. I nearly got fired myself. Then when I tried to reason with him, he dumped me and moved on to Stacy Black.”
“That’s preposterous,” said Lily, a little unsure of herself but still too angry to care.
“He treated her like garbage, put her in the hospital, and between us we paid him a fortune to stay out of our lives forever. Which he did, until Pippi Beach. You don’t know him.”
“Yes I do, and I’d believe him over you or Stacy Black any day of the week. Because I know you too, I’ve seen you in action myself. You kept Casey away from Juliet, didn’t you?”
His expression darkened. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You broke her heart!”
“It was a summer fling! To keep it going would have been painful for everyone. You see how it is—what life is like for us. We’re never in one place longer than a few months, we live with uncertainty—”
“That’s not why you did it, though,” flashed Lily. “And Casey would never have dumped Juliet like that. But you made sure he did by using Cecilia.”
Dorian winced. “Yes I did.”
Lily shook her head with disgust. To hear him admit it brought back the look on Juliet’s face as she hopefully texted Cecilia and waited days for a reply, any reply, and got nothing.
“That’s so cruel. And childish. Casey can make up his own mind about who he likes.”
“Casey is a child himself. He doesn’t know what can happen.”
“Sure, Franklin told me—stalkers, blackmailers, crazy fans. So that’s what you think of Juliet? And me?”
“Not really.” He actually looked sad. “I was worried about gossip and photos, leaks to the media, but not through you or Juliet.”
“Who, then?”
“Your mother.”
Lily turned scarlet. The truth of it stuck her like a knife.
Her mother was very much capable of using any passing relationship with money and power to her own advantage.
She had been doing it all her life—was still doing it to her sisters—and for Dorian to see this and judge her for it was unbearable.
“I don’t mean to be harsh,” he said. “But this business I’m in is brutal, it’s dangerous. I’ve got to be careful. I’ve got contracts, responsibilities, whole productions that rely on me and the way I conduct myself in public. You want me to pretend none of that matters?”
“No, and don’t you dare leave here thinking I’m just upset that you insulted my mother. I would have turned you down anyway; you’ve just saved me the trouble of feeling bad about it.”
“Because I’m being honest.”
“No, because you’re being cruel! Not to mention arrogant, self-centered, entitled, smug, and offensive, exactly as you were the first time I saw you.”
He seemed almost too angry to speak. That moment they first locked eyes at Pippi hovered in the air between them.
“This is what you think of me?”
She was about to reply but he stopped her with a stricken look.
“Don’t answer that. It’s obvious. I’m sorry I came. You won’t see me again.”
And with that, he was gone.
Lily stood there, unable to move. She heard his footsteps down the driveway, the creak of the gate, the slam of his car door, and the roar as he sped away and out of her life forever. Finally. She should be happy. Yet for some reason, all she could do was collapse on the couch and cry.