Eight. 2
“Seriously?” she says.
“I mean—” He laughs, shakes his head. “God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m thinking. You’ve probably worked with way better acts. You’re friends with Sicily, for Chrissake. I’m sure you’ve got opportunities lined up around the block.”
“Oh, no, no,” Germaine says. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just like your guys’ sound, and—yeah, I’d consider it. If you’re still looking after all this is over.”
“Really? Great!” Hugo says. “Your name would really open doors. Totally, no pressure, but yeah. I’ll give our manager your number, and you two can talk in the next few weeks. I think we have your contact info from the contracts, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Germaine smiles.
They’re drinking together and laughing. When they finish their whiskey and champagne, they pluck seconds from the trays of the waiters who rove about the party. Germaine catches more than one of the other women casting envious glances her way. She likes it. She likes it a lot. The idea of a relationship floats back to the surface of her mind—not Hugo, of course. That would be weird. And she wouldn’t hurt Sicily like that. Sicily never gets over guys, and because of the baby, Hugo is part of her life forever.
Germaine can’t imagine a long-term relationship, even if it’s with a baby daddy. She does want a fling. Greg and Giles can pull any girl they want—no consequences, no scrutiny. They brag about it so much that it’s beyond gross. Why couldn’t Germaine do the same? She should have been wilder in LA when she had the chance.
But still, Hugo’s attention makes her feel a little giddy. And that job offer ...
She could still do the revenge, right? No one would have to know it was her. And then she could make up for it by being the best booking agent ever. That would balance things out—right?
Germaine wonders what Marie would do.
“Oh, he’s just, his nose is like a little button,” Hugo is saying, almost with an ache in his voice. He’s asked her if she knows about Noah, if she wants to see pictures. “I never knew why they called it a button nose before, but you just want to press it— boop . Like you’re calling a lift.” He laughs hard, and Germaine can’t help joining in. “I’ve never seen anything so perfect.”
He pulls his wallet from his pocket and unfolds a few pictures that have clearly been handled many times.
“He’s a sweetie.” Germaine smiles, but she notices that the majority of them are clippings from tabloids. Only one is a printed picture of Hugo and Noah in an easy chair, both of them smiling widely. Germaine knew that Sicily doesn’t have much to do with Hugo, and she thought the feeling was mutual—but it’s clear that Hugo doesn’t get to see his child nearly as much as he’d like to. In fact, he sounds positively obsessed with the boy.
“You’re really into him, huh?” she says quietly.
Hugo looks into the distance and nods. “I’m sure Sicily told you, but—I wasn’t at first. I said some awful things to her. My whole world was turning upside down, you know? I didn’t know how I could be a dad. Wasn’t ready. But the first time they let me see him, when he was still so wrinkly and small ... Oh, Germaine. I did want to be a dad. Ready or not.”
She flinches at her name in his mouth.
“I’ve thought about suing for custody.” His voice is suddenly brusque. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’d have much of a case.”
“Really?” Germaine says. The timing between her thoughts and speech has slowed a little, and she inwardly admonishes herself; she needs to stay sharp for the revenge. “That seems—extreme, doesn’t it? Have you tried talking to Sicily about any of this?”
He shakes his head. “That family has those two under lock and key. My visits with my own son are like being buzzed into a prison. That Uncle Henry guy’s always standing somewhere in the background like a warden—arms crossed, sunglasses on. It’s not healthy for a little boy. Not healthy for Sicily, either, I don’t think. There’s something weird about that lot.” He frowns. “I’ve tried to talk to her when I’m there, but she doesn’t have much to say to me. Doesn’t return my messages or calls when I’m gone, either. I go straight to voicemail, like my number’s blocked.”
“I’m sorry,” Germaine says quietly. She’s long known that there’s something off about Sicily’s family, but it feels even more stark hearing it come from a stranger’s mouth. And maybe her experiences with her own family had dulled her senses to it.
“I feel like I just count the days between one visit and the next,” Hugo says, refolding the pictures and rubbing his nose. “It’s awful. I see Noah, he’s a little tyke. I go on tour, I come back, he’s walking and talking. I’m waiting for the day that I visit and he’s suddenly an adult with a job and a cup of coffee. And I’ll realize that I missed his entire childhood ... and he won’t know who I am.”
Hugo laughs hollowly. He looks down into his empty whiskey glass with such despair that Germaine feels a twinge of annoyance. Sicily either wasn’t honest about how Hugo really feels, or her family has shielded her from his true nature. Hugo has no reason to lie to Germaine about his love for his son. And doesn’t Germaine know what it’s like to feel lonely, far away from the people you really care about? Sicily has her family with her, even if they’re frustrating sometimes; she has Noah. She has everything.
“When we were young, she did used to joke about having to give any eventual baby up for adoption so her family wouldn’t make it into some kind of sideshow,” Germaine says with a chuckle.
But Hugo doesn’t look amused. “Really? She said that?”
“Yeah, I mean—I don’t think she was serious . But.”
“For her to even mention it, though, there must be some risk of them exploiting our child.”
“I guess. I don’t know.”
“Because if she knows it’s a bad environment for him to be in—and if it’s already been bad enough for her these past few years—” Hugo shakes his head, looking intently into the distance.
Germaine is feeling dizzy all of a sudden, a little unsettled in the stomach. Something in their conversation has shifted. Hugo’s not as bad as she thought, but Sicily would be hurt if she knew how Germaine was talking to him. Sweet Sicily, always the nicest girl in Kidz Klub , always the hardest worker.
“You should be gentle with her, though,” Germaine says. Sweat is breaking out in even greater earnest along her brow, not from the heat of the night now but from guilt. “She’s always tried so hard to be good. I’m sure she’s doing all she can to be the best mother. I mean—she even tried to be a good influence on me and one of our other friends when we were young, you know? I think it ended up being the other way around, though.” She laughs nervously. She’s babbling now, trying to say anything that will make things better. Germaine can fix this.
“Oh, really?” Hugo grins.
“Yeah. We were the ones who were always dragging her out to clubs, parties, talking her into being a 3AM Girl—do you remember that name they gave us? I don’t know, it was silly. We were good-looking teenagers with too much money, and I guess that’s what happens to good-looking teenagers in Hollywood.”
“Yeah,” Hugo says. “That’s wild. 3AM —what was that all about, anyway?” She doesn’t notice how quiet he’s gotten. She doesn’t realize how closely he’s listening.
“I don’t know.” Germaine laughs, and so does he. “We didn’t always ... Oh god, it’s so embarrassing now. We were hot messes, not the kind of girls you’d take home to your mother, and we didn’t always wear underwear. And the paparazzi caught it when we’d get out of limos.”
Hugo grins. But his eyes are hard. “Her parents let her do all that as a minor, huh?”
“She wasn’t a minor the whole time.” Germaine shakes her head again and again, trying to get a grip on the situation. “But Sicily was always so good . It was our fault, convincing her she needed a sexier image if she wanted to sell records to anyone older than ten. We told her she needed a hot boyfriend, the clothes, the publicity.”
“Couldn’t have hurt the Bell moneymaker scheme, could it? She really went through the guys, I hear.”
“No.” Germaine’s eyes are wide. “No, they went through her. I mean, she was always going after someone way out of her league—not because she wasn’t gorgeous, but because LA was teeming with all these skinny, leggy girls who would do anything—and I mean anything —to be a star.”
“Still,” Hugo says. “She got quite a reputation.”
“It was the guys’ fault,” Germaine says pointedly. “They’d stick around for a few weeks, or maybe a month or two, and then find someone wilder and more exciting. Someone without a family like the Beverly Hillbillies managing her entire life.”
“3AM Girls, wild relationships, parties ... you sure paint a vivid picture,” Hugo says, and there’s something soft and dangerous in his voice. “What an environment to grow up in. And the same people who ‘raised’”—his tone drapes air quotes over the word—“the mother of my son are now, in a sense, the guardians of my son. Interesting.”
“We were young. It’s what you do when you’re young in Hollywood,” Germaine says, feeling defensive. And incredibly uneasy.
But his eyes are bright, so bright. He’s gotten exactly what he needs from her.
“Hollywood. It’s a nice place, huh? I’ve been thinking about moving to Los Angeles myself, in fact.” He winks, then checks his watch. “Look at that—about time to get warmed up.”
“Hugo, wait.” If Germaine could just think, if she could just get her story straight, defend the way Sicily was raised—but she doesn’t want to do that, either. “I don’t want you to misunderstand me.”
Hugo shrugs, overly casual. “What’s there to misunderstand? It was lovely meeting you, Miss St. Germaine-Chang. I’ll be in touch about that booking gig, okay?”
Then he’s gone.
Germaine stands still, rooted to the spot, even after the guests return to the ballroom and music begins to sound over the rooftop balcony. A million paths unfold before her—she should warn Sicily, she should sabotage Hugo, she should bribe all the lawyers in LA—but all seem like dead ends. What has she done?
Revenge forgotten, Germaine walks slowly back to her suite. She shouldn’t have told Hugo about Sicily’s misgivings regarding her family, that there was uncertainty about their fitness as parents even back then. Because he was right, wasn’t he? All the jokes Sicily had told, all the little quips they said to each other in their party days—they hadn’t been jokes at all. They’d been denial.
The 3AM Girls really were girls—kids, essentially, who were allowed to run wild and do dangerous things because their parents were too unaware, like Germaine’s; too absent, like Miranda’s; or—worst of all—because the racy press was lucrative, as the Bell family well knew.
Germaine hadn’t seen it that way at the time. They all felt so grown up; and besides, she was there to watch over Sicily and Miranda.
Germaine goes to the bathroom, stands in front of the mirror over the sink, and begins to rub her makeup off. Her eyeliner smudges a dark streak across her eyelid.
But she hadn’t always been perfect at the protector thing, either.
Germaine took her status as the oldest 3AM Girl seriously. It was a role that had chosen her, not the other way around. A vocation, if you will. She was the most worldly in Kidz Klub , the most sophisticated, having come from a wealthy and business-oriented background that the other kids hadn’t.
She hadn’t expected to make friends on the show when she first began at age fourteen. She was there to begin her career—that wasn’t what her parents told her, but it was Germaine’s plan. And she didn’t make friends, not until Miranda and Sicily were added to the cast and gravitated toward her. Germaine never knew why they chose her. And though it took her time to warm up to them, she soon couldn’t imagine things any other way.
The three of them came of age together, Germaine and the two little ducklings that followed her around. She guided them through the rules of the soundstage, having been on the show for one season more than they’d been. She was there for their first sips of alcohol, holding their hair back, their introduction to parties and nights out.
It was quite a debut. Her eighteenth birthday was the first night all three of them went to the clubs together, with Miranda’s mom finally deciding fifteen was old enough to go out on the town, and Sicily telling her parents she was sleeping over at Miranda’s. Germaine had an au pair as her stand-in guardian for the duration of the Los Angeles stay, but she was largely free to do whatever she wanted.
She helped them dress up in their most revealing outfits, painting on eyeliner for them and helping them straighten their hair. She’d been out a few times with other cast members, but this would be way more fun. This would be her first time going out with real friends.
“We’re not going to get blackout drunk, right?” Sicily had said, worried.
“Is it even going out if you don’t?” Miranda scoffed.
“You pace yourself, girls,” Germaine chided. “We have all night. Sicily, pull that neckline down.”
Sicily had been fussing with her shirt all evening, pulling the scoop neck up way higher than it was supposed to go. Germaine readjusted it so the lacy top of her bra just barely showed.
“You’re so lucky to have cleavage already,” Miranda sighed, looking at her enviously.
“ Stop. ” Sicily giggled, pulling the shirt up again and turning bright red.
“Come on, we all have something to flaunt,” Germaine said. “Miranda, get some blush on that cherub face of yours.”
Miranda wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather have a skinny face like you.”
“Hush. Body trends come and go, but natural beauty is forever,” Germaine quipped as she placed a fake lash over her own waterline. “You’re gorgeous, both of you. Now hurry up, the limo’s almost here!”
They each took a shot of Fireball and passed around a dose of Oxy, courtesy of Miranda’s generously dispensed leftovers.
Giddy and loud, the girls hurried down the elevator of Germaine’s family’s penthouse suite and into the limo, piling into the back seat.
They sang Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” at the top of their lungs, careening through the Los Angeles streets as the substances made their bodies feel awake and alive.
When they arrived at the club, Germaine brushed past the bouncer and indicated that the others should do the same. The dance floor was alive with silhouettes and laser lights, with remixes of Ja Rule and Missy Elliott songs interspersed with David Guetta pounding through the crowd.
Germaine was proud to see Miranda’s and Sicily’s eyes light up at the thrill of the party. She ordered drinks at the bar for all three of them, shouting her order, and then they stepped into the fray, vodka cranberries in hand.
Germaine loved the clubs, and she knew the girls would, too. You could lose yourself here, forget about anything outside that black set of doors, and simply be moved by the music and the people.
She caught the eye of one guy a few feet away, smiling at her, and nodded back when he winked. He headed over to them and danced closer to Germaine, moving his hips with hers and eventually shifting behind her. Germaine leaned into him, exhilarated by the anonymity, high on the drinks and the pills and the sexuality she was able to explore so far from her family.
Miranda was giggling; Sicily’s jaw had dropped. Germaine just smiled and winked at them.
Soon two other guys approached, one for each of them, and they were all dancing even closer together.
“You want to go somewhere quieter?” Germaine’s guy murmured in her ear. “They got back rooms here.”
Germaine’s heart jump-started. She’d never been invited to a back room before, and she never would have gone herself, but now that the others were with her ...
She raised her eyebrows at Miranda and Sicily. “You want to go somewhere quieter to talk?”
Miranda grinned and nodded. The little group navigated through the crowd, slipping through a door into a room with black leather seats and red velvet walls. The lights were down low.
Germaine sat on the couch with her guy on one side of the room, and Miranda and Sicily sat on the other with theirs. Germaine’s man put his arm around her, leaning in close.
“How old are you girls, anyway?” he said with a chuckle.
Sicily’s guy laughed. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to, man.”
The guy drew Germaine closer, and she went in for a kiss, smelling the musky scent of his aftershave and sweat. She pulled back for a breath, expecting to catch Sicily’s and Miranda’s eye and communicate How wild is this? with glee. But her heart sank.
The two of them were perched stiffly on the couch. Miranda looked halfway into her guy, but her body language was clear—she was nervous. And Sicily’s eyes were as wide as saucers, terrified. Her guy was kissing her neck even as she was trying to lean away.
“Wait, wait,” Germaine said, straightening up. “Hold on. Are you two cool with this? Or do you want to go back out?”
Miranda half shrugged, but Sicily nodded her head very quickly.
“Yeah? Should we go dance some more?”
“I think they want to stay,” Sicily’s guy said, pulling Sicily into him with both arms so that she was leaning on his chest. Sicily froze.
“No, I think we’re good here,” Germaine said, standing up. She’d messed up. She should have been paying better attention to how her friends were feeling, but now she would fix it. They were her responsibility.
“Baby, come on, be cool,” Germaine’s guy said, even with his eyes half-closed from whatever he’d taken.
“You can dance with me more out there, yeah?” Germaine said. “Come on.”
Miranda’s guy looked equally out of it and reluctant to move, but Sicily’s gave a mean smile. “Okay, you all go. We’ll stay here.”
“No,” Germaine said. “Let her go.” Sicily looked like she was about to cry, and it made white-hot anger flare in Germaine’s chest.
“Maybe you’d like to take her place? I could go for a thai massage,” the guy said, standing and sizing himself against Germaine’s height while still gripping Sicily’s wrist. He came up short.
“I’m Vietnamese, you fucking idiot,” Germaine spat, and swung her leg to kick him hard in the crotch with her stiletto heel.
He crumpled with a high-pitched noise, falling back onto the couch, and Germaine had led Miranda and Sicily back onto the freedom of the dance floor.
Germaine stares into the middle distance, somewhere beyond the sparkling earring that Marie fixed on her ear earlier this evening. That’s who Germaine was. Who she always thought she was, who she wanted to be—their protector, their advocate. She made mistakes, sure, but she didn’t let anything bad happen to her girls.
Until the moment she did.