"Yeah, man," I said. "Just a little distracted, that's all."
"Fuck yeah, you are!" He took a long pull on a beer. "All these tits, you should be fucking distracted."
We were in a suite in a hotel room in Vegas, partying it up. At least, my buddies were, this whole group of guys I've known for the past few years, living in San Diego. We were mostly Navy guys, a couple of my Marine friends.
Me? I was distracted at my own retirement party.
Some fucking retirement.
I didn't choose to leave the EOD. The explosive ordnance disposal unit, that was my job. It's what I had done for the last five years. That wasn't a long time to most people, but to me it was a lifetime. I'd joined the Navy at seventeen. EOD was everything to me. It was all I knew, and I didn't want to leave it. When the guys said I was having a retirement party, they weren't talking about the whole do-twenty-years, get-a-gold-watch bullshit. They were talking about getting medically retired. That was another thing entirely.
That wasn't a goddamned retirement. Not after five years. Not in my books anyway.
That was getting euthanized, put down like a fucking dog just because I lost my leg.
"Man, have a drink and lighten the hell up." Adam handed me a beer. "I know you're going to fucking miss me and everything, but you're being a fucking pussy. We've got booze, girls, and a suite in Vegas. Ain’t got all that back in West Bend.”
"Miss you, hah. Fuck you, man." But I took the beer anyway. It wasn’t his fault I was being an asshole. I wasn’t a drinker, didn't like being out of control. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a beer. It had been years. But this seemed like that kind of an occasion. The end of an era.
That sounded goddamned melodramatic. And I wasn’t an over-emotional kind of guy.
But hell, I was an EOD guy. Always had been, always would be. I didn’t know what to do outside of the Navy. It's all I'd known since I was seventeen. My mother was all too happy to sign that paperwork letting me go to boot camp early.
And all I wanted was to get the hell away from West Bend and the shit that I grew up with.
To get the hell away from the asshole. My father.
Now, here I was, headed right back to that shit. Back to the shithole piece of land where I was raised. Back to being a fucking pariah because of my brother.
But not back to my father. He died last week.
I hadn't told a single goddamned person that he was dead.
And I hadn't shed one fucking tear for him.
“Here,” Chase said, handing me a red plastic cup, even though I was already holding a beer. “Got the good fucking whiskey, too. We’re high rollers tonight, shithead. Drink up. Once we’re done looking at tits, we’re going to go down to the casino.”
I took a sip from the cup, feeling the burn of the alcohol as it slid down my throat. What the hell? You only live once, right?
***
CHAPTER TWO
RIVER
I was flying, hurtling down the highway in the twilight of the early evening. I could see the Vegas lights up ahead. I didn’t know where the hell I was going when I left Hollywood, but somehow I'd ended up here. I had been driving in a daze. I was still in a daze, my head clouded and foggy.
I should feel something, I thought. More than just blank.
Viper- yeah, that was definitely not his real name; his real name was David- was my everything. Was.
It was so hard to tell after a while, where he ended and I began. There were so many other people involved: his agent, my agent, our managers, our families.
Our fans.
I had no idea what I was doing right now. The one thing I knew was that I had to leave.
When I pulled up to the hotel, my hair was hidden, tucked up underneath my baseball cap. I didn’t take off my sunglasses, even though I knew it made me look ridiculously pretentious. I always hated that kind of thing, the stars who would wear their sunglasses inside just because they were too cool for school.
I showed the clerk the fake ID, gave him my fake credit card, the stuff I used when I couldn’t risk being found by the paparazzi. I was using them now for that reason. Hotel staff were notorious for letting photographers know where you were - at least that had been my extensive experience.
By extensive, I meant since I was discovered.
It wasn’t always mansions and hot cars and partying with the “it” girls and boys. Before all that, I was about as white trash as it got, living in a trailer with my mom and sister, barely getting by on food stamps. Well, to be more precise, it was my mom, my sister, and my mom’s string of shitty boyfriends she paraded through the trailer, the ones that beat up on her, beat up on us.
A few of them did more than just beat up on us.
Not that she was any better. If anything, she was worse than any of them, at least to me. I was the scapegoat for all of her disappointment with life.
She was still part of my life, out in Malibu, living in a place I paid for.
Fate is sometimes cruel, but not to the people it should be cruel toward.
Everything changed when I was discovered, sitting on a curb in my tattered sundress, with my skinned knees and bruised arms, my limbs browned from a mixture of sun and dirt. I was barefoot not because it was summer, but because someone had stolen my shoes at school and we couldn’t afford another pair. My sister and I had been looking for loose change on the sidewalk, scrounging around to see if we could get together enough for a soda after school, but really just buying time away from the trailer because mom was inside with one of her boyfriends and it wasn’t safe to go home.
~ ~ ~
He pulled up near the curb, in a shiny black car that looked like it belonged to a millionaire. He stepped out, and when he paused as he walked by me, looking down at me over the edge of his sunglasses, I thought I was looking at a prince or a king or something. This man was someone important, someone special.
And, as it turned out, he wasn't a prince or a king. But he was someone special.
He looked at me for a long time, my face reddening under his gaze, then squatted down to look me in the eye. “Is this your sister?” he asked me.
I nodded, too shy to speak.
“You’re going to have to say something,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“River,” I said.
He smiled and nodded. “It’s perfect,” he said, and stood up. “You’re perfect. Abso-fucking-lutely perfect. Where are your parents?”
“My mom’s at home,” I said. “Her boyfriend’s there.”
He just nodded, didn’t say a word for a minute, and I sat there on the curb, rolling a pebble around underneath my foot.
Then he cleared his throat. “When’s the last time you kids ate?” he asked.
I shrugged. I was used to being hungry. Had I eaten breakfast? I couldn’t remember. “Last night?” I asked.
“Where do people eat around here?” he asked.
~ ~ ~
The rest was history. The man was an major Hollywood producer and, cleaned up, I became the darling of one of his films. The first of many films. And my life became a carefully crafted Cinderella story, one that glossed over the more sordid details of my childhood, at least in the more reputable magazines. Every so often, the tabloids tried to dredge up details of the past- to interview one of my mom’s old boyfriends or talk to someone from my hometown. But mostly, they let me play the role of fairytale princess, the girl who was plucked from obscurity and swept up into Hollywood glamour.
It was supposed to be roses and sunshine, designer shoes and expensive champagne for the rest of my life. That was the fantasy. That was what people wanted when they looked at me- they wanted to believe in the power of fate, in the suggestion of possibility- that they too might be whisked away from their lives into the castle to live with a prince.
It was the reason that my wedding, the live broadcast to millions of viewers, was such a big deal. I’d grown up in front of cameras- and now I’d be married in front
of them too.
Inside the hotel room, I opened a box of hair dye, a dark brown color I selected at the drugstore where I’d made a pit stop to buy pajamas and toiletries, my fingers lingering on the box of fuchsia I’d briefly considered, my whole body longing for a change. I wanted to be something else, someone other than the person I had become.
But in the end I chose sensible brown, something that wouldn’t call attention to me.
I still didn’t know what the hell I was doing, here in a hotel, dyeing my hair like I was some kind of fugitive. I needed to turn around and face things. I needed to go back home. I just wasn’t sure where home was anymore.
After I finished the dye job, I raised the scissors to my hair, snipping at the long tresses, now brown instead of blonde, a huge part of my identity.
My image was polished, classic- the past few years, I’ve been compared to Grace Kelly. The thing was, I'd always empathized more with Marilyn Monroe. She was tragic, her demons so much a part of her that they eventually destroyed her.
That was something I could understand.
The pieces fell into the sink, curling at the ends, scattering on the flat surface of the countertop. I chopped with the scissors until I resembled something I hoped was more pixie-punk than cut-by-a-lawnmower.
When I was finished, I surveyed my work in the mirror. The girl looking back at me, all big eyes and suddenly prominent cheekbones, looked nothing like the “me” I knew. At a glance, I was starkly different. I thought I would be able to pass undetected in a public place.
I grabbed a mini-bottle of vodka from the refrigerator, hearing my mother’s scolding voice in my head.
Always choose vodka, she would say, making a clucking sound and shaking her head. It’s the skinniest.
She would fucking know, skin and bones, her meals mostly diet pills and booze.
I slid the vodka back into the refrigerator and chose something else. Rum. My hand reached automatically for the diet cola and then I chose the regular one, the one with all of the calories.
It was only after I finally sat down on the bed that I allowed myself to cry. I breathed in deeply, and began to sob, the sound loud in the stillness of the hotel room.
I was selfish, feeling sorry for myself. I lived a charmed life. I was marrying one of the hottest rock stars on the planet. I made an incredible amount of money making films.
A little cheating came with the territory, right? So what if Viper was sticking his dick down my sister’s throat? He was a rock star and I was a starlet. It was to be expected.
It’s not that I was ungrateful for my life. Exactly the opposite. I knew what it was like to be hungry. I knew what it was like to be beaten within an inch of my life, and worse. And now I knew what it was like to have everything I could ever want, and more. I knew what it was to have the adoration of millions of fans.
And yet, I also knew what it was like to be so incredibly lonely that you ached for something - anything - that would make you feel like someone else.
Someone loved.
Someone known.
***
CHAPTER THREE
ELIAS
“Shit, man, you’re not going to pussy out on us, are you?” Adam turned to me and asked. He was the last in the group, headed down to the casino and the strip club and the club to drink and pick up chicks.
I rolled my eyes. “Get the fuck out,” I said. My thoughts were foggy. I knew I was drunk. “I’m going to take a shit. Is that fucking okay with you, mom? I'll meet you down there.”
“Fuck, I didn’t need to know that, you stupid asshole,” he said, and I heard the door slam.
I didn’t head to the bathroom. Instead, I sat down on the bed, leaned my head against the headboard. My leg ached, and I just wanted to take off the fucking prosthetic and stretch out, go to sleep.
I can rally, I told myself. Another drink will perk me up. The guys are right. I should fucking party now, get some lap dances. Get laid. There's not anything fucking waiting for me in West Bend. None of that shit anyhow.
I thought I was out of that place, and now here I was, going back.
I should get good and fucking drunk.
After everything that had happened, why the fuck not?
I pulled myself up to a sitting position. My body felt like it was made of lead, weighed down, tethered to the bed. I was suddenly reminded of why I didn't drink, the feeling of being medicated a painful reminder of then.
Being back in the hospital.
It was like I was immediately transported back there, the smell of disinfectant and the stale hospital smell suddenly invading my nostrils. I could feel the sheets, rough and worn under my fingertips, the sensation of morphine coursing through my veins, making me tipsy and nauseous all at the same time.
And the realization that my leg was gone.
It felt like someone punched me in the gut.
And then I blinked, took a breath, and it passed. I'm here, I reminded myself, in a fucking suite in a hotel room in Vegas.
Fucking lucky was what I was. Fortunate. Not like some of the guys I deployed with, the ones who weren't so lucky.
I had no reason to feel sorry for myself, and I wouldn’t.
I stood up, wobbly on my feet for a moment, and caught myself by putting my hand on the mattress.
So, fuck it. I was going to go down and hang out with the guys, my makeshift family, and thank the man or woman up in the sky that I got home in mostly one piece. I was going to go get ripped and party like a normal twenty-three year old, like someone who didn't have all the worries and dark thoughts that I just couldn’t seem to shake.
I was going to be fucking happy.
I poured liquor into a plastic cup, followed by soda.
Where's the ice? I peered into the ice bucket at a pool of liquid. No matter. I would get some on the way down to the casino.
I walked down the hallway, squinting, looking for an ice machine.
Where the fuck is the ice in this place?
A girl was walking down the hallway ahead of me, her back toward me, wearing fuzzy pajama pants with cartoon characters on them, holding an ice bucket. "Hey!" I called out to her, and she turned slightly toward me, then spun around just as quickly, walking faster in the opposite direction.
Fuck. Seriously? What, she took one look at me and decided I was some kind of threat? Or maybe she just doesn't like fucking gimps like me.
"Hey!" I yelled, this time louder. I was being obnoxious. I didn’t care. "It's fucking rude to walk away when someone's talking to you."
She stopped, and I found myself suddenly a couple of feet behind her. She spun around, and I was face to face with the hottest fucking girl I've ever seen in my life.
She was also pissed off.
And all I could think about was grabbing her and pushing her up against a wall so I could fuck the hell out of her.
She looked up at me with her lips slightly parted, her breath short, and fire in her eyes. "You know what's fucking rude?" she asked, her voice louder than it needed to be for how close I was standing to her. "It's fucking rude to chase down a girl in the hallway of a hotel. Maybe she doesn't want to be chased down by some creep."
I was too distracted by her sweet lips to even register what she was saying. Her tongue flicked over her bottom lip, and in an instant I was hard. Goddamn it. I never wanted to just press my