The Price of One Night
EASTON
My best friend Mason picks the place.
He always does.
It’s a small bar on a side street in West Hollywood, the kind that doesn't advertise, with a black door and a single sconce above it that you would miss if you were not looking for it.
Inside it's dim and warm and full of low conversation. No cameras. No phones held up. The bartender doesn't look up when I walk in, which is the whole point.
Mason is already at the back booth.
He stands when he sees me. He hugs me the way he always does, three solid claps to the back, and pulls away to look at me properly.
“You look like garbage,” he says with a grin.
“It’s nice to see you too.”
He laughs, and we sit.
“Also.” He picks up the beer he’s been nursing before I walked in. “If we ever go this long without conversation again, the next bar I pick will be the kind with karaoke.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I absolutely would. I have a song picked out.” He smirks and raises the bottle to his lips. “Bonnie Tyler. Total Eclipse of the Heart. The whole four minutes with added theatrics. I will dedicate it to you. In front of everyone.”
I laugh at that because the image of Mason in a bar performing a song is simply one I wouldn’t forget in a while if it happens.
It's also the first real laugh I have had in a week and a half, and it comes out rusty, and Mason watches me do it the way he has been watching me do everything since we were fifteen, and his face softens by a fraction.
“There he is.”
“Shut up.”
“He laughs! He has not died! Hallelujah.” He raises his beer in a mock toast.
I signal a passing waitress and request a club soda with lime.
Mason’s eyes narrow when the waitress leaves.
“Club soda?”
I shrug.
Mason glances around the bar before his gaze settles back on me. It's a look I know well. The quit stalling and tell me what's wrong look.
Usually, it works. But today, I keep my mouth shut.
My drink arrives. I take a sip.
Apparently, that's all the patience Mason has. “Spill it.”
I give him my best innocent look.
He isn't buying it for a second. “First, you walk in here looking like a wounded bear. Then you barely say anything despite my heroic attempts at entertainment.” He gestures to himself. “And now you're drinking club soda.”
I shrug again.
His eyes narrow.
“The Easton from a few months ago would’ve laughed in my face before ordering club soda.”
“Maybe I've matured.”
“Bullshit.”
I grin. “Maybe I'm making healthier choices.”
“Easton.”
“Maybe I just really like bubbles.”
“Easton.”
I grin wider because this is Mason. My best friend. The kid I grew up with.
The one person on the planet who can spot something wrong with me before I've admitted it to myself.
If he has to pry me open and dig around for answers, he'll do it. And the annoying part is he'll probably find them.
The truth is, I've barely touched alcohol since that night.
I take a long drink. I look at the tall glass of drink with the lime wedge on the rim. I don’t know how to begin a sentence that opens this particular topic, but I start anyway.
“I think I’m paying the price for living recklessly now. Someone up there…” I point to the ceiling and look up. “...probably saw me frolicking around and thought it’s damn time I receive a lesson.”
“Now you sound like my mom. Come on man.”
I huff.
“Six months ago...” I start, gathering my thoughts and trying to figure out how the hell to explain the whole Maya situation in a few sentences.
Mason waits. I see his ears perk up, and usually, I’d laugh, but not today.
“After the championship. The party. Maya.”
His face doesn't change yet, but I see the small reset in his eyes. He remembers Maya. He met her once, that night, briefly. He didn’t like her.
He told me later, in a voicemail I deleted, that he did not trust her, and I told him I was an adult, and he had not pressed.
“Yes?”
“I was drunk.”
“Okay...”
Now comes the part I hate admitting.
Because this isn’t me. Yeah, I’ve always liked a good time. Women. The occasional night of drinking. But I’ve never let any of it interfere with my career. That always came first.
Except that night.
That night, I fucked up. And I’ve been paying for it ever since.
“I did something stupid. Something she suggested, and after the win and everything that came with it, I didn't have the discipline to say no.” I pause, my jaw tightening. “She had drugs. I'd never touched anything like that before, but she kept pushing. Kept telling me to loosen up.”
I look down at my hands.
“Part of me knew she was filming me. I saw her holding up her phone, and something in the back of my mind kept telling me this wasn't right. But I convinced myself I was being paranoid.” I let out a humorless laugh. “The truth is, I was too drunk to think straight or make a smart decision.”
Mason doesn't say anything. Yet.
“She has the videos. Me using the drugs on her. My face is stamped across all videos. There are pictures too.”
“Jesus, Easton.” He slams a palm over his face.
“She’s been asking for money, and I’ve been paying her for the last six months.
Small amounts. Nothing big enough to draw attention.
Just enough to keep me paying. Just enough that the payments themselves start to look like evidence that I had something to hide.
” I stare down at my drink. “I knew that. I paid her anyway.”
A beat passes.
“I stopped two weeks ago.”
Mason sits back.
He runs a hand down his face. He isn't looking at me. “Easton.”
I stare at him, waiting for the criticism. I deserve it.
But I know Mason. He won't just tell me how badly I screwed up. He'll help me find a solution, too.
“You need a lawyer.”
“I have a lawyer.”
“You need the team’s lawyer.”
“The team’s lawyer is already involved. The team has been involved since the second photo dropped two weeks ago.”
He looks at me, and I immediately know he hasn’t seen it.
Between his job as an architect and the long hours it demands, the man has no time for the media gossip.
“There’s another story. Someone actually.
” I say. “Who would get hurt, and umm…” My throat is suddenly dry because the image of her getting pulled into this mess begins to form in my head.
“We’ve already been photographed in public.
If the Maya pictures come out, it’ll be a huge scandal. Not just for me, but for this woman.”
He laughs. Soft. Surprised. He shakes his head, and he laughs again, and the bartender across the room glances over at the sound and back down again.
“You’re seeing someone?”
I don’t answer.
“You? The man who has not been on a second date in three years? The man who turned down the Vogue thing last spring because he did not want to introduce a woman to that level of attention? That man is sitting in this bar telling me he has someone else?”
“It’s not that way. It’s…”
“It is, though. Look at your face.”
I look at my drink.
“I wanna meet her.”
“Mason…”
“Easton, I want to meet her. Whoever she is. Whatever you are not telling me. I want to meet her. I want to know her name, I want to shake her hand, and I want to ask her one question that you won’t approve of, and I want to do it before this Maya thing splashes on her, because if she's yours, she's going to be in the middle of it.”
“It’s not like that, Mason. It’s complicated. It’s messy. Hell, I don’t know what I’m doing. I just know she came as a surprise, it wasn’t supposed to be this way, but now… now I don’t know… she doesn’t even know I see her that way.”
He laughs. He’s amused, and I know my situation is funny to him because I can hear myself. And I don’t sound sensible.
“You’re down bad, man. More reason I need to meet this woman.” He takes a swig of his beer.
The bar door opens behind him. She walks in.
Maya.
Mason doesn't see her. He can't, from where he's sitting. I can.
She doesn't look at me. She walks to the bar, whispers something to the bartender that makes him smile, and then he slides a glass across to her. She takes one sip and turns.
Her eyes find mine across the room.
For three seconds, she holds them, then she sets the drink back on the bar, picks up her purse, and walks out the front door.
I'm out of the booth before I have decided to be.
“Easton?”
“One second.”
“Easton?”
“One second, Mason.”
I'm in the parking lot. The door swings shut behind me. My eyes adjust to the dark.
There is a black SUV idling at the curb. The driver is in the front seat, not looking. Maya is standing next to the back door, her phone already out.
She doesn't say anything.
She turns the screen toward me.
It's a photo of me and Riley.
Not the blurry one the gossip sites have been running for two weeks.
It’s a clean photo. Crystal sharp. The two of us walking into the back lot of Valentina’s, my hand at the small of her back, her face half-turned toward me, fully visible.
The freckles are visible. The hand is visible.
The expression on my face is visible, and it's the expression of a man who has stopped pretending he doesn’t want the woman next to him, which is something I had not known was visible to anyone, including me.
The paparazzo took more than he published. Or someone bought what he did not.
Maya doesn't say which.
She doesn't say anything.
She locks the phone, slips it back into her purse, and climbs into the SUV.
The driver pulls smoothly away from the curb and into the West Hollywood night, and the taillights are gone in under fifteen seconds, and I'm standing in the parking lot of the bar, with the smell of someone else’s cigarette in the air, and the message ringing in my ears as clearly as if she had spoken it.
I have you. And now I have her too.
I don't know how long I stand there.
When I go back inside, Mason is half out of the booth.
“Easton. What the hell?”
I sit down.
I put both hands flat on the table.
“That was her.” I exhale. “Maya. She was here, with a photo of me and the woman.”
He stills.
He sits back down. He doesn't say anything for a minute. He looks at the door, then back at me. He looks at the door again.
“Whoever she is, you have to tell her.”
“I can’t. Not now, not like this.”
“You have to tell her. Tonight. Don’t let her find out the way Maya is going to make her find out, which is in a way you can't control and can't soften. If this is going to splash on her, she deserves to know before it does. You don’t get to decide for her. You hear me?”
I look at him.
“She’s going to bolt for the hills. She’s going through a tough phase at the moment, and this… this is exactly what scares her about me.”
“Then you tell her the truth. Let her hear it from you, and let her decide.”
The two weeks I have been carrying settle on my chest like a hand.
He's right. Of course he's right.
I have spent two weeks watching Riley read texts from a man who decided for her, and I have been making the same kind of decision quietly on her behalf in my own house, in a different costume, telling myself the difference was that I was doing it to keep her safe.
The difference was supposed to be that I was doing it to keep her safe.
Mason is watching me.
“Tonight, Easton.”
I nod.
The drive home has my heart in my throat.
The hills are quiet. The gate slides open for me. The house is dark except for the lamp by the couch, which means she has been waiting up and fallen asleep.
She's curled on her side. The new James Hadley Chase is open on her chest, her hand splayed across the pages, her hair coming out of its braid. The blanket is half off her. Her face is soft in a way I'm not going to think about right now.
I crouch down.
I lift the book off her chest and set it on the coffee table, then I scoop her up.
She makes a small sound. Her face tucks into my neck, and a certain warmth washes over me. I carry her up the stairs, lay her in my bed, and pull the covers up over her.
I sit on the edge of the bed, and watch her sleep.
I had one job tonight. I rehearsed it in the car on the way home. I have the sentences ready. Riley. There is something I need to tell you. Six months ago. I have all of it.
I sit on the edge of the bed for a long time.
She looks so peaceful when she sleeps, that I don’t have the heart to wake her.
A while later, I’m lying beside her, shirtless, with the covers drawn up to my chest. The sky outside the window starts the slow turn it does toward morning. She turns in her sleep, finds my hand on top of the covers, and curls her fingers around two of mine.
My heartbeat falters, and I try to ignore it.
I turn on my side and drape my arm over her torso, slightly pulling her closer.
I have to tell her. Come clean before things get messy.