Chapter 17 #2
“Are you going to be able to prove that you didn’t send the emails?” I asked. I worded it very carefully; although Ryan and I had made up, I did feel very gun shy of criticizing her after she’d blown up at me in Seattle. She had that power over people, even if she didn’t realize it.
“It’s less about proving that I didn’t send the emails than proving that I did want the songs leaked. Justin has no evidence that I orchestrated the leaks. If he can’t produce any, it’s slander.”
“And then you get your payout,” I said.
She nodded. “My one-dollar payout.”
“Can you last that long?”
Ryan didn’t look at me. She said, “We’ll see.”
Jasmine
It was messy. I can’t lie. Skip and the legal team opted for a symbolic one-dollar payment even though we could’ve pressed for a lot more. But instead we were fighting an uphill battle to put the optics back in our favor and help the public to see that, actually, Ryan’s the victim here.
Justin had no proof. I mean, come on. It’s obvious looking back.
But he had the element of surprise on us, and his sob story was a good one.
He played it well: Poor me, Ryan broke my heart when I was just a boy and then she stole my song.
I was just doing what she told me to do.
I wanted to help her even though she’d hurt me.
There was this whole down-home regular-Joe thing he had going on, like he was some starry-eyed kid who got swept up in big bad Hollywood drama.
It wasn’t until he got served that he really started turning nasty. And he got others involved too.
Teen Star Magazine, July 2015
Jwa Tells All!
“We loved each other,” Justin William Ayers said of his childhood sweetheart turned rival, Ryan Holding.
The young man from Massachusetts, who moved from the East to West Coast to pursue a film career, saw one dream crushed after another when his original script was heisted.
“Austin Proust stole my screenplay,” Justin said. “But Ryan stole my future.”
He had high hopes when he finally reconnected with superstar Ryan, with whom he’d grown up in their hometown of Hamilton, MA.
“I used to help her write songs back when we were in school. I mean, I was happy to lend her some of my ideas—I didn’t care that she wasn’t giving me credit.
I was just glad to see her succeed.” Ryan told us his story with gleaming eyes that turned misty when he spoke of Ryan’s betrayal.
“But ‘Mine All Mine’—that had a special verse. I don’t know, it was personal to me.
And hearing that, hearing she didn’t even realize it was something I’d written for her, it made me understand how much free labor she’d gotten out of me over the years.
I wondered if she’d been doing the same thing with other guys.
Maybe she was using all of us—and that’s why she moved through us so quickly. ”
Braden Petri, one of Ryan’s former flames, agreed. “Anything I did for Ryan was never enough. I felt like she was taking advantage of me. She was like a spider, spinning her little web until you were caught in her trap.”
“I mean, she used our whole relationship to write a song,” said Tyler Michaels, another victim of the Ryan revolving door. “That should tell you all you need to know.”
When Ryan asked Justin to leak her songs for her, he was shocked.
“It’s something the old Justin would have done for the old Ryan without a second thought,” he said.
“I said, ‘Is that even legal?’ Ryan said, ‘Does it matter? I’ll sleep with you if you do it.’ And hey, come on .
. . I loved this girl. I’d been wanting to get with her since I was barely thirteen.
And even though I trusted her, and I did what she asked, I had this little voice in my head, you know?
It was telling me things weren’t right.”
Mere days after the leak, Ayers says he was on his way to Ryan’s house to finally make their relationship official—just as she had promised—when he received a call from Anaheim Studios, where he had been hired as a location scout.
“They fired me,” he said, “because Ryan had told them to. I was supposed to take the blame for the leak all along. I was her fall guy.”
“Ryan was the victim of a personal attack on her intellectual property,” said Ryan’s legal team when Teen Star reached out for comment. “We intend to prosecute Mr. Ayers for his actions to the fullest extent of the law.”
No wonder she’s still single!
Mari
I told Teen Star to use our PR statement. “Ryan is deeply pained by this difficult situation and only wishes to walk away with a verdict that is fair to all parties and a friendship that is still intact.” I told the lawyers not to talk to the press.
Did they listen? No.
The public ate it up. And if they could slut-shame her, all the better. #MeToo didn’t really come around until about a couple of years later—maybe they would have seen through Justin’s accusations if the timing had been different. But as it was, it . . . wasn’t great.
Skip
That fucker made way more on his little press tour than he would have as an assistant location scout in a whole year.
And let’s be clear: He was an assistant location scout, okay?
Actual scouting is a job that takes skill and experience that he did not have.
Jesus Christ. He was one step away from an unpaid intern, and he’s acting like it was his dream career.
Anyway. We won the battle but not the war, not exactly.
Justin didn’t have any solid evidence for his ridiculous claims, and we got our one dollar.
Plus several thousand in damages from the lawsuit for the leak that I finally pushed once I got my head out of my ass.
I think the Prousts slapped him with a fine too.
But the press was really hard on Ryan. Really unfair.
I found her in the studio one day just poring over all these tabloids with tears running down her cheeks. I said, “Hey, come on.”
She looked up and I grabbed all the magazines; I took her hand and brought her up to the roof. We had a little firepit up there that we never used. Dropped most of the magazines in there.
“You know what I think about all this bullshit?” I said.
“What?” she said, really quiet.
I took my lighter—I still haven’t been able to quit smoking, don’t tell Jas—and I lit a scrap of paper and dropped it in the firepit with the rest of those rags. We watched them burn together.
“That’s what I think. And that’s what you should too.”
And we just stood there together. Until all those nasty words were nothing but ash in the wind.
From:
Sent: January 8, 2016, 8:47 p.m.
To:
Subject: Thanks
Hey Ellie,
Thanks for dinner last night. I know I wasn’t very talkative. I’m better at putting my words down in writing than talking it through, yeah? You know that about me.
It’s just been hard. I’ve tried to be there for her through all of this but I feel like she’s pushing me away. She’s been terrified of someone finding out about us with all the bad press, terrified that I believe that bullshit story or that I think she’s whoring herself out or something.
I’m hurt she would think that I’m as bad as everyone else. That really stings.
It would be pretty rough if people found out, sure, but I wouldn’t care. She thinks it would break up the band, and I say first of all—no it wouldn’t, I’m not going anywhere. And second of all—if it did . . . would you care more about the band than me?
I want to be there for her but she’ll avoid me for days before turning around and needing comfort like she’s never needed before. What am I supposed to be doing? Like, from a woman’s perspective, how do I handle this? How does anyone handle this? What am I doing wrong?
I don’t mean to dump this all on you, Ellie, I’m sorry. I’m just ready for this to all blow over so things can go back to normal.
Thanks for listening anyway.
—W