19. Chapter 19
Presley
My home in Calabasas feels cold and sterile as I dump my suitcase on the floor of my bedroom with the almost all-white decor and then collapse face-first on my bed.
Usually when I travel for work, I can’t wait to get back to my home, to all the creature comforts I’m accustomed to. But this time around, I actually hate being here. I hate what it means. I hate that I decorated this place in so much freaking white. There was so much color in Sunset Harbor. The water, the green foliage, the amazing sunsets. A pair of beautiful green eyes and dirty-blond hair.
I was more colorful there, too. More light in my eyes, more coloring in my face. I hardly recognized myself when I’d look in the mirror, I was so . . . happy.
And now I’m back in LA and it all feels drab and sterile and stupid. I saw myself in the entryway mirror of my two-story Mediterranean-style home just a few minutes ago, and I look like I’ve died and been unwillingly brought back to life.
Presley, you colorless fool.
The paparazzi were waiting for me when we landed. No doubt the flight information had been leaked by my mom.
“How could you not even tell your own mom where you were?” she’d asked me on the flight home, riding in first class with tickets I’d purchased.
I hadn’t wanted to have this conversation on the plane, but it needed to be said. After earlier that day with Briggs and the way he looked at me before walking away, my own heart breaking into a million freaking pieces, I was not in the best mood.
“You were the last person I wanted to tell,” I’d said.
“Why’s that?” she’d asked, looking genuinely upset by my answer.
“Because you report my location to the paparazzi all the time.”
“I do not,” she’d said, the sincerity gone and the facade back and lit up like a marquee board.
“Mom, I needed a break from everything. I had one planned, and I thought we could go together, and then you . . . ruined it.”
“I ruined it? I didn’t make that video, Presley. Is this because of Declan? ”
“No,” I’d said emphatically. “He’s all yours, that’s not the problem. I’m not blaming you for the video; that was on me. But it was the fact that you told people where we were going on that trip, and you wanted to turn it into a publicity thing.”
“But I did that all for you,” she’d replied. “The world is always watching you, Presley, whether you like it or not. Everything I’ve done is for you.”
“Mom,” I’d said, stopping her from the I gave up my life for your career speech she often gives me when I push back. She has worked hard, especially when I was younger, and I came out mostly unscathed from an industry that can take some terrible turns if you don’t have the right people in your corner, and I’m grateful to her for that.
I looked at her with pleading eyes. “When I say I need a break, I need you to believe me.”
She’d looked away then, out the window of the plane. She did apologize later, as we’d started our descent into LAX. And we had a heart-to-heart about everything. It wasn’t our first, and it won’t be our last, I’m sure.
Now, here on my stupid white bed, I can’t stop thinking about how terribly things turned out with Briggs. I can’t stop replaying the conversation in my head. I hate the memory of that hurt look on his face, how painful it was to tell him about the pictures. And then I thanked him for all he did for me? Like he was some sort of glorified tour guide ?
Oh gosh.
I miss Briggs, and it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. I feel this emptiness without him. I’m sad that he didn’t believe me. That he wouldn’t even consider that the pictures were taken by his family. How could it possibly be anyone else? I do appreciate how loyal he is. But that’s Briggs.
When I saw the pictures, I knew right away he wouldn’t believe me. I also knew that we wouldn’t be able to get past it. I’d always be worried around his family, not being able to trust them, and he’d be defensive like he was today. I knew when I saw the pictures in that article that we’d been flung up the side of an insurmountable hill. There was no way to get over it.
I hope the way things ended doesn’t forever taint my memories. I hope I’ll be able to look back on the past few weeks and remember all the fun things I did with Briggs and feel something positive, like the happiness the adventures created. Even cut short, and terribly so, it was still my first real summer.
It’s sort of ruined right now, after my exchange with Briggs, those pictures in that article, and the heartbreak I’m feeling, but I hope someday I can move past all that.
I’m still face down on my bed, my tears soaking the duvet underneath me, which is white, of course. I’m changing that tomorrow. I’m ordering myself a bright-blue bed covering. I’m going to brighten up this entire place. My world is no longer white. It’s orange, red, blue, and heartbreakingly green .
I should get up and shower off the grime from the flight, but I don’t bother doing any of that. I don’t even change into my pajamas. I just crawl up my California King bed and under the sheets, and then I cry myself to sleep.
“How was that?” I ask Kara after I’ve recorded what’s to be my apology video, written and directed by my publicist. We picked a drab background with natural lighting to sit in front of, I’m wearing a trusty old sweatshirt, I’ve got minimal makeup on, and my hair is pulled up in a bun.
And it’s all a big show.
It’s the first day of July, only fifteen days until we start filming, and the producers of Cosmic Fury expect it of me. So, here I am, telling the world I’m sorry about being caught having a very human experience, albeit a pretty awful one. I do feel bad for losing it on set; it was unprofessional of me and inconsiderate. And that’s what I say in my apology.
I don’t offer excuses, no reasons, no telling the world what had been happening in my life at the time to try to divert the blame away from me. The general public won’t know that I hadn’t had a real break in fourteen years and that my mom had ruined my first opportunity. Oh, and that she and Declan Stone are a couple. I think my being away actually pushed them closer together.
“I think it was great,” Kara says, giving me a thin smile. I feel bad for my whole team—my agent, Kara, my publicist, Leslie, and Shani, my assistant, who thank goodness is still working for me. They were the ones dealing with this while I was gone, trying to spin stories and manage contracts while I was having the time of my life. I’ve apologized to all of them, repeatedly. I’m not sorry I left them like I did, but I am sorry they’ve had to deal with the fallout.
“I’ll have Leslie watch it and make sure it’s what she wanted, and then I’ll post it on your socials,” she says.
“Thank you,” I reply, sitting on my white couch, my legs curled up under me as I hug a white (ugh) throw pillow.
I placed a massive order for new colorful things for my house and it will be here next week. I can’t wait. I’m no longer the Presley who likes things bright and white and pristine. I want colors and disorder. No, actually, I don’t want that. I’ll keep bright and pristine but get rid of most of the white.
“There’s also the matter of the pictures on the island,” Kara says, tapping the end of a pen to her chin.
“What about them?”
“They’re getting a lot of buzz. I think people like seeing you with someone who’s not in the business.”
“Oh,” I say, not really wanting to talk about this .
“It could be a good spin. Would the man you were seen with—what was his name?”
“Briggs,” I say. I don’t think I’ve said his name out loud since I got home, and it makes my heart speed up and my stomach drop at the same time. Briggs Ebenezer Dalton. I was prepared to use that name next, but never got the chance. And now I guess I’ll never know. It would be weird to text him out of the blue and ask him, right? He did say he would tell me before I left, but I’m sure that was the last thing on his mind when we said goodbye.
“Yes, Briggs,” Kara says. “Do you think he’d be willing to take some better pictures with you? The ones posted were pretty grainy. Leslie thinks it will help things after the backlash from the apology once it’s posted.”
Ah, yes, it’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t type of thing. As soon as my apology goes up on social media, there will be an initial round of we don’t accept your apology online, with stitches on TikTok of people breaking down my words. But then that will settle and hopefully we can all move on.
“No,” I say, answering her question. That won’t happen. Because I won’t subject him to that, and also because the world doesn’t deserve him. And more importantly, Briggs doesn’t deserve to be some kind of publicity pawn. Even if things had worked out with him and we were trying to figure it out and see where things might go with us, I wouldn’t put him through that. Although, knowing Briggs, he’d do it for me—or at least he would have, before I accused his family of betraying me.
Good hell. I will never get over him if I keep reminding myself how amazing he is. Not that I’m actually trying to get over him. I think it will take a long time to do that, and also, I don’t want to. I don’t want to get over him.
“That’s not going to happen,” I say to Kara, and she gives me one single nod. “Any other ideas?”
She taps the pen again, but this time on the pad of paper in front of her. I kind of love that Kara still uses pen and paper and isn’t looking down at her phone, typing it into the Notes app like the rest of us.
“I guess we could have you seen with Declan again,” Kara says.
I close my eyes and bury my face into the stupid white pillow I’ve been holding in my lap. I look back up at her. “You know he’s dating my mom, right?”
She keeps her eyes on the pad of paper in front of her. “I’d heard.”
I let out a breath. “I guess if you think it’ll take any attention from Briggs, then fine.”
I want to laugh, or cry, or both. Didn’t I just tell Briggs the other night on the beach that I wanted to do things differently this time? Didn’t I say I wasn’t going to play all the games, that I wanted to be real? And here I am, doing planned apologies and scheduling appearances with Declan. Why can’t this job be just about the acting and nothing else? It’s so frustrating.
Kara jots something down, her pen scratching along the paper as she writes. “The apology video should do most of that, but a couple of sightings with Declan would probably seal the deal. I’ll get that set up.”
“Great,” I say, the word coming out resigned. I am feeling resigned right now. To a life I both love and hate simultaneously.
Kara leaves after making me put a few other obligations in the phone calendar that I share with Shani, and I’m left alone in my starkly white living room.
Mindlessly, I turn on the television and flick through the channels until I stop on one showing Notting Hill , just at the beginning when Julia Roberts’s character, Anna Scott, first walks into the travel bookshop.
Because I like to punish myself, to kick myself when I’m down, I watch the whole thing while I cry.