43. Will
WILL
“Theo looks happy,” my mother said, coming to stand beside me at the bar. The band was on a break, and Theo and Ryan were up on the stage covering some obscure song only they knew. It was somewhat atonal, but I was so drunk I kind of liked it.
“He does,” I agreed. Life had dealt Theo a terrible hand, but you’d never know it. Although, looking back, I suppose there had been signs, like the time he found us reading scenes on the balcony and burst into tears.
“How are things with you and James?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t be too hard on him, okay? Sometimes it’s not about you.”
I clenched my jaw. When was it ever about me? Even before the Golden Globes fiasco, it wasn’t about me. It was about how I might beat Dad to the Oscar podium right out of the gate.
“Did you know about James?” I asked. My mother hadn’t seemed surprised by Emily’s revelation, just annoyed.
“Not when I hired him, no.”
“And after?”
She shrugged and sipped her wine. “I mean, I had my suspicions, but I didn’t think it mattered. Does it?”
The bartender set two Manhattans before me. “I should probably go bring James his drink.”
I found James, Miles, and Tiffany smoking a joint just outside the strobing lights of the dance floor. Beyond them, the moon cut a silver trail across the lake.
“I thought you were saving that for me,” I said, passing James his Manhattan.
That morning, he’d stuffed a joint in his pocket and announced, “We’re gonna smoke this on the prow of the ship later, just like Jack and Rose.” To which I replied, “I think you’re misremembering the plot of Titanic.”
“This one’s mine,” Tiffany said. “Monika gave it to me. She’s taking me to Fashion Week next month.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Really? Look at you, making friends with models.”
“You might make friends with models, too, if you stopped referring to them as models. People are not just their jobs.”
“That’s a relief, seeing as I don’t have one anymore. I’d hate to be a nobody.”
I leaned against James, who went briefly rigid before returning the pressure.
“You’re going to get your job back,” Miles said. “Don’t you worry. This is all going to blow over.”
I highly doubted that, but it didn’t matter. With James at my side, I felt like I could handle anything, even saying goodbye to the little rugrats who’d given my life meaning these past five years.
“Can you hold this for a minute?” I said, handing James my drink. “I have to use the restroom.”
“Sure.”
Before leaving, I leaned in and brushed my lips against his ear. “When I come back, what do you say we go look for a closet somewhere?”
“I heard that,” Miles said. “And I already know the perfect one. It’s on the bottom floor, near the back of the ship.”
I made my way across the upper deck and headed downstairs to the bathrooms. When I reached the second floor, a deep, booming voice bellowed my name.
“Will, come have a drink with me.”
Derek sat at the bar in the virtually empty dining room. His date, an Irish model Nandi hated because she wore real fur, was nowhere in sight.
“I have to pee.”
“Just have a quick shot, then.”
I hadn’t seen Derek this drunk in ages, maybe ever. He’d removed his jacket, and his shirt sleeves were pushed up his thick forearms.
“Come on, we never hang out anymore. You’re always with what’s-his-face.”
I was tempted to point out that what’s-his-face’s name was James and that we didn’t hang out anymore because, until recently, Derek had a court order forbidding it. But instead, I ordered a shot of bourbon.
Derek pointed at his empty glass, and the bartender refilled it with Southern Comfort. “I liked your toast. I love how even when you don’t make sense, you make sense.”
I smiled even though I had no clue what Derek was talking about. My toast was terrible.
“I talked to Tony, and he swears he didn’t leak those stories.”
I didn’t want to talk about Tony. In Derek’s eyes, Tony was irreproachable. It had been pointless to confront Derek about him in the first place.
“I was thinking maybe I could help somehow,” Derek said. “Maybe after the movie is done filming, we can go on Celebrity Jeopardy or something. You know, like we did before. I’ll even let you win this time.”
“I won the last time, and it wasn’t even close.”
“Yeah, but this time I’ll let you win.”
I finished my shot of bourbon and slammed it on the bar, which the bartender took as a request for more. Ugh, that was the last thing I needed. The room was already starting to spin. “I really have to pee.”
“Okay, but there’s something I need to tell you first, and you’re not going to like it.”
I froze. Was this it? Was Derek finally going to tell me what went down in his hotel room ten years ago?
He leveled his unfocused eyes at me. “James is not who he says he is. He’s a pap.
He was at Andy’s bachelor party, only you don’t recognize him because he had a beard then.
He’s the one who wrote the story about you and Sharron, and probably the others, too.
It wasn’t Tony. It was James. He’s been playing you. ”
Derek was obviously confused. James had a secret, it was true, but he wasn’t a pap. He was the real Jimmy Young.
“I think maybe you’ve had one too many—”
“I know it’s hard to believe. But your dad hired him thinking he could control the narrative, only now James knows too much. We’re so fucked, Will. He’s going to ruin us both.”
This was absurd. Derek was obviously high or wasted, or both. Tony was probably filling his head with paranoid bullshit again.
“There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
The hairs on the back of my neck lifted as Tony’s voice rang through the empty dining room. A second later, his hand landed on my shoulder, and he squeezed gently. “William, hilarious toast. Loved the adolescent humor.”
I shrank out of his grip. “I’m going to go.”
As I stepped away, Derek caught me by the wrist. “He’s not right for you, Will. He’s a liar. At least I told you the truth. And it didn’t mean anything. I just had her poster on my wall growing up, and it—”
Tony clapped a hand over Derek’s mouth. “You’ll have to forgive Derek. He’s had a bit too much to drink tonight. Doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
I turned to leave but stopped when I saw James in the doorway, looking like he’d seen a ghost. It caught me off guard because James wasn’t one to get scared. Angry? Definitely. But not scared.
Derek pushed Tony’s hand away. “I told you I’d tell him. But you didn’t believe me, did you? You thought I’d keep my mouth shut. But I’m not like you. I’m better than you. I tell the truth, even when it hurts. Ask him, Will. Ask him if he’s a pap.”
Beside me, Tony started to laugh. “Wait, you didn’t know? This is too funny. Talk about déjà vu. Seriously, what is wrong with your family? Do they never tell you anything?”
Tony’s words wiped the remaining color from James’s face. Even his eyes seemed a duller shade of green.
“Yes, your boyfriend here moonlights as an entertainment journalist. He’s also a stripper, or is that not the right term anymore? I can’t keep up with woke culture. Do you prefer exotic dancer? Anyway, point is, the guy will do just about anything for money. Even you, it seems.”
This was ridiculous. James didn’t even know how to dance. And the agency wouldn’t let a pap work for them. Tell them, James. Tell them you’re really just Jimmy.
But James didn’t say a word. He didn’t even blink. He just continued staring, like a zombie.
“See, your problem, William, is that you let your parents run your life and career. They’re only looking out for their own best interests, though, not yours. If you had signed with me when you had the chance, you’d be living in a mansion in Beverly Hills right now, using your Oscars as bookends.”
Why wasn’t James telling them they had it all wrong? He wasn’t capable of something like this.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” Tony asked James. “What, are you just going to plead the Fifth? Don’t you think poor William, here, deserves an explanation, or at least an excuse? After all, you are fucking him, aren’t you? Seems like you owe him at least that much.”
Was that panic in James’s eyes? I knew that look.
I saw it every day when I caught one of my students doing something they shouldn’t: the quick flash of guilt, almost immediately replaced by fear, anger, or defiance.
Or, in some cases, a bottomless void. It wasn’t always fight-or-flight. Some students froze.
“That’s not possible,” I said, speaking for James. “He wasn’t even in the room when Sharron threw the wine at me. He couldn’t have taken the picture.”
“No, but his partner could’ve. Isn’t that right, Jimmy? Who is he? Is he here with you now?”
Wait, Tony knew that James was really Jimmy, too? Had I been the last one to find out?
“I assume you heard the rumors William would be playing you in the movie and went to the bachelor party hell-bent on making sure that didn’t happen.
Am I right? Of course, you needn’t have worried.
Once William’s father learned he was dying, that this would be his last chance to win an Oscar, he had no trouble throwing William over for Ryan. ”
My mind raced to make sense of Tony’s accusations, to come up with a plausible explanation for James’s silence, but only one came to mind: He’s only using me. None of it’s real.
“Wow . . . okay.” I reached for the glass of whiskey and raised it to James in salute. “Well done, I guess. You certainly had me fooled.”