Ryan was saying all the right things to her. How good he’d felt when he was around her. How he still wanted to call her twenty times a day. But Charlie had said all the right things to Madison, too, and look how well that turned out. He’d abandoned her all over again. Who was to say Ryan wouldn’t do the same thing?
Drake reached out and lightly touched her arm. “You all right?” he asked.
Madison nodded. “Of course. What are the rocket scientists talking about now?”
Jay leaned forward across the table and tapped Madison’s wrist. “Mad, you look mad,” he said. “Get it? Mad’s mad?”
She rolled her eyes and pulled her arm away. “I’m having the time of my life, Jay. Can’t you tell?”
Jay shook his head earnestly, apparently incapable of picking up on sarcasm. “Not really. You know, it’s like I’m always telling Gaby. Your mind is your most powerful organ, right? And it can totally control your emotions. So let’s pretend you’re not having fun, because right now you are. You can be, like, ‘Mind, you better shape up,’ and poof! it will. Your mind is the boss of your mind, if you know what I mean.”
“Wow,” Madison said. “I’ve never heard such profundities.”
“Now, I don’t know what that word means,” Jay said, “but I’m just saying, you can be happy if you want to, Madison.”
She felt herself stiffen. Was there actually some truth to what Jay said? Was she capable of not worrying so much about her father if she simply decided not to? She didn’t want to ponder that now. “I am happy,” she snapped. “I am ecstatic, in fact.” She reached over and grabbed Drake’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s dance.”
The cameraman lumbered after them, and she knew that anything she and Drake might say would be incomprehensible thanks to the thumping bass. Well, whatever, Trevor could throw in subtitles or not, she didn’t care. Right now she needed a break. Even if it meant dancing in public.
She smiled at Drake, relieved to be away from Jay and glad that for a moment, conversation wasn’t necessary. He misread her look as flirting and put his arms around her waist, and ever so delicately—politely even—Madison removed them. She tossed her hair and gave a little hip shake.
Drake was a nice guy; he really was. He probably looked good on camera, too, and maybe they’d date some more if Trevor asked her nicely. And if he agreed to reinstate the white flowers provision in her rider (not because she cared about alabaster peonies—because she cared about winning). But Madison didn’t want Drake getting the wrong idea. He would do, but he was no Ryan Tucker. Her body and her heart were both off-limits.
15
SPICING UP A STORY LINE
Carmen, wearing the coppery silk dress Laurel had picked out for her and a pair of Giuseppes (from last year, but still fabulous), eyed the raucous party from the balcony above. She’d braved the crowds around the wet bar, and then picked her way through knots of girls in tight dresses and guys in fitted deep-V’s before deciding to step away from it all. The place was a total meat market, and while Laurel would obviously love it if Carmen found someone to flirt with, Carmen wasn’t feeling it.
Although, considering what she’d read about her “roving eye” on D-Lish this morning, she’d probably be accused of flirting with any guy she happened to walk past.
It was tiresome, but Carmen could handle lies like this—they were just part of being famous. What bothered her far more than being called “boy crazy” was her suspicion that she had finally figured out the identity of the blog’s source. Too bad Carmen had invited her to the party before that particular lightbulb switched on.
“Hey, Carm,” Sophia yelled, gesturing for her to come down. Sophia had on some sort of Pocahontas costume: beads, a bikini top, and a fringed leather skirt. If anyone on The Fame Game needed a stylist, Carmen thought, it was that chick.
Carmen shook her head and pointed toward the stairs, as if they were simply too difficult to climb down at this particular moment. Sophia shrugged and immediately turned her attention to some guy with a long, gelled-back ponytail. She was an even bigger man-eater than her sister. Carmen had even heard rumors that Sophia was hooking up with someone in PopTV production, but she couldn’t summon the energy to care who. Besides it wouldn’t be the first time someone hooked up with a crew member.
Carmen knew that Kate and Madison had gone out to the pool area, where the hosts had set up tents strung with white lights and clusters of tables, as if the event were an upscale wedding instead of an enormous rager. Gaby, who seemed pretty tipsy (red flag!), was out there somewhere with Jay, and Fawn had texted a while ago to say that she and Lily had arrived and they were in search of some friend from high school that Fawn was dying for Carmen to meet.
Carmen, who’d learned a thing or two about avoiding parties thanks to early experiences at her parents’ house, had simply swiped a nearly full bottle of wine from an end table and brought it along with her upstairs, and now she was over halfway done with it. She was doing a terrible job of spicing up her story line at the moment, but she just needed a minute or two away from the spotlight.
She told herself that by the time she got a little further into the chardonnay, she’d feel inspired. She just hoped the producers wouldn’t find her before then. She knew Laurel was somewhere in the crowd searching for her; she’d gotten the text. But Laurel could play Find Carmen a little bit longer.
“Look at you, up here all by your lonesome,” Drew said, appearing by her side. He eyed the wine bottle. “Drinking alone?”
“Not anymore,” she said with a smile.
He settled in beside her and took a sip of his Sierra Nevada. She noticed a patch of gauze on his arm, right below his elbow.
“Did you get another tattoo?”
He nodded. “A bass clef.”
“Nerd,” she said affectionately, giving him a gentle poke in the ribs with her elbow. It was nice to see him. By himself. (When was the last time she’d seen him without Kate secured to his side?)
“I’m a nerd like Flea’s a nerd.”
Carmen frowned. “Who’s Flea?”
Drew looked shocked. “Oh, only the bassist for a minor band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You might have heard of them?”
Carmen shrugged. “Never liked them that much,” she said.
“Well, he’s great. And bassists—”
“Are the unsung heroes of rock ’n’ roll, I know,” Carmen said. Her dad had an entire speech about Paul McCartney’s bass playing, but Carmen very rarely listened to it. “So, where’s your other half?” she asked. Just to be polite.
“She and Madison had some deep secrets to discuss on camera or something,” he said.
“Madison’s probably giving her the numbers of all her plastic surgeons,” Carmen said.
Drew pulled back. “Whoa,” he said. “Kate would never.”
“Well, she did just bleach her hair almost white,” Carmen pointed out. “So you never know.”
“That’s a totally different thing,” Drew said. “And she looks great.”
“I know, I know,” Carmen said. “But Mad is all about surgical enhancements, in case her bra size doesn’t make that blatantly obvious.”
“Didn’t I see an item about you getting something done?” Drew said. He grinned and squeezed his pecs suggestively.
Carmen was so over people bringing up things they’d read about her online or in Gossip. But she kept her tone light. “That was last month’s news, Drew. But, no, I didn’t, in case you had any doubts. You should know, you practically live in my apartment.” Then she bit her lip, wondering if she should go on. Should she talk to Drew about her suspicions? She knew that he didn’t like being in the middle of a conflict. But he was her best friend, even if they didn’t spend that much time together these days, and wouldn’t he want to know? How she’d seen something she’d really hoped she wouldn’t?
Besides the whole boy-crazy accusation, D-Lish had quoted “a source close to the actress” saying that she ?
??definitely isn’t pining for Luke Kelly. In fact, she says she’s keeping her dating options wide open, and she might have her eye on a certain hot young rocker.”
It was exactly what Carmen had said to Lily a few days ago in Venice, but so far she hadn’t been able to bring herself to confront her (so-called) friend. She’d talked to Fawn about it, and Fawn had told her to keep the information to herself for a while. “Let’s wait and see,” Fawn had said. “Honestly, if you confront her she might say more stuff about you. It’s better to phase her out.”
So Carmen had been quietly worrying about the situation ever since, which might have been why she wasn’t really in a party mood.
“So,” Drew said. “How’s tricks?”
“Remember how Luke told me that I should feed fake information to my friends?” Carmen blurted.
“Yeah. Didn’t he want you to say you were considering Scientology? Did you? Because I didn’t read that, but I would have liked to. ‘Carmen Curtis works to uncover her thetan, the omniscient, non-material core capable of unlimited creativity. . . .’” He snickered.
“It’s not funny, Drew,” Carmen said. “And it’s weird you know their lingo. But anyway, it’s annoying to have lies printed about you all the time. Even if they’re small ones. What if you saw your picture tomorrow on the web and the caption was like, ‘Drew Scott covers up his new One Direction tattoo’?”
He grinned. “Now, that would be funny. Can you plant that somewhere, too?”
Carmen drained her glass of wine and sloshed some more in her cup. “The thing is,” she said, “I told Lily that I had my eye on someone besides Luke, which of course I don’t, and it showed up on D-Lish.”
“But anyone could have offered up a lie like that. It’s too generic.”
Carmen shook her head. She was glad that Drew always assumed the best about people, but he couldn’t always be right. “I gave Lily a name, though. And then I basically see it in print. That’s pretty specific. It’s always the same writer, too. Like there’s some reporter who has it in for me.”
“The reporter’s only printing what he’s being told.”
“By Lily,” Carmen repeated. “So what I’m thinking is, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Drew grinned his goofy, familiar grin. “And where there’s wine, there’s a party. Why are you not sharing?”
Carmen handed him the bottle and he took a sip right out of it. For a moment she was annoyed at him—for not taking the gossip thing seriously, and for drinking the wine she had begun to think of as her personal bottle.
But then Drew put his long, tattooed arm around her shoulder. “Oh, CC,” he said. (He was the only person not related to her who was allowed to call her that.) “I’ve missed you. We never hang out anymore.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” she said.
She sighed. She was willing to drop the Lily subject. And she wouldn’t let herself say anything about Drew walking around her apartment in a towel. Or how she had come to refer to him and Kate as Krew. She was only going to focus on the positive.
So she drank her wine and thought about how loyal he had been to her, all through high school. How he had been her chauffeur and protector and confidant. How he’d thrown her a surprise party on her fifteenth birthday, and taught her how to drive a stick shift, and taken her to the prom when her stupid boyfriend dumped her the week before. Drew had always, always been there for her. He was her rock.
But now he was there for Kate.
Carmen felt her spirits sag. She noticed that the edges of the room seemed slightly warped and fuzzy: Either she’d suddenly developed nearsightedness or she was getting a little drunk.
Thank God she wasn’t down with the rest of those people, having a camera focusing in on her face. She was so glad to be hiding out with Drew on the balcony, above it all.
“Remember the night my car broke down and you came to rescue me on PCH?” Carmen asked.
“And then we went down to the beach and sat on the sand—”
“—and it was totally freezing, but you rolled up your pants and went in anyway—” she said, feeling better already.
Drew threw back his head and laughed. “—and then when I splashed you and you got so mad at me, and then you made me buy you a burger and a shake at Mel’s Diner even though it was, like, two a.m. by then—”
“—and my parents about killed me when I came in the door, but when I told them I was with you they weren’t mad anymore. And they made us hot cocoa and we all sat in the kitchen and talked. . . .” She was almost giddy, remembering.
It occurred to Carmen in that moment that being friends with Drew was one of the few decisions she’d ever made that her dad hadn’t questioned.
Drew had loved her so much then. Why hadn’t she ever loved him back?
She felt achingly nostalgic for the time before all this, when they were inseparable. And then nostalgia made her suddenly wild and reckless. “Drew,” she said softly. He turned to her, the smile still on his face. And she leaned toward him and kissed him on the mouth.
Almost immediately, he recoiled.
“Whoa, Carmen,” he said, backing away from her. “What are you doing?”
Her heart was hammering in her chest. She had no idea what to say.
He held his hand over his lips. “You kissed me,” he said.
As if she didn’t know that! “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” she said, instantly full of regret. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking.”
Drew was shaking his head. “It’s really weird,” he said. He looked at her sternly. “And totally inappropriate.”
She wanted to crawl under the Turkish kilim rug covering the polished wood floor. Or dive over the railing into the party below.
Drew stood up abruptly. “I think I should go,” he said.
Carmen didn’t say anything at all. She only nodded. And then she watched him walk away and disappear into the crowd.
She could only hope he wouldn’t tell Kate. She could trust him, couldn’t she? He wouldn’t want to cause conflict between the two of them, especially now that they lived together. He knew Trevor loved fights and he wouldn’t give him the pleasure of airing one.
Carmen had managed to convince herself that it was no big deal—no harm, no foul—when she put her hand on the waistband of her dress and felt something.
Her mike pack.
It was still on and recording every word.
16
BIGGER. BETTER. BRIGHTER.
Kate had been up past 2 a.m. every night lately, rehearsing for her upcoming showcase, and she had the dull skin and under-eye bags to prove it. She’d tweaked a couple of older songs, giving them much better hooks, and written two and a half new ones. (Not that the half did her much good.)
Todd, her manager, seemed very pleased with what he called Acoustic Kate, but he insisted they visit a production studio “for some musical experimentation.” Which was how she came to find herself in a mixing room at Studio Nineteen early on a Sunday morning, shaking hands with Johnny and Adam, two engineers, while casting nervous looks at Drew, whom she’d brought along for moral support.
Todd gave Johnny the digital files of Kate’s songs, and he made quick work of transferring them while Adam brought Kate and Drew bottles of Evian. (Kate didn’t want hers, but after remembering Todd’s instructions had taken it anyway.)
Suddenly Kate’s voice came over the monitors as she sang about “Los Angeles, that delirious dream.” She was startled by the volume, by the clarity of tone. She could hear how Lucinda had not been perfectly tuned. Oops.
Todd nodded as he listened. Adam and Johnny were expressionless, though, and Kate ached to know what they were thinking. Did they like it? Hate it? She’d been standing in the corner, fidgeting, but now she felt like her legs were going to give out so she walked over to the leather couch and sank down. It was huge and black, and so soft she felt as if it might swallow her completely.
She reached for Drew’s
hand and nervously traced the vine tattoo on his wrist. She didn’t look up again until her song had ended.
Johnny, to her great relief, was smiling. “Yeah, this is going to be good,” he said. “I think we need to experiment with the sound a little, though. Get something a bit bigger and more polished. Poppier.”
Drew leaned forward. “More polished?” he said. “But don’t you think the raw quality of her voice and her guitar is part of its appeal?”
Johnny shrugged. “Well, yes, but—”
“Sure,” Adam interrupted. “It’s totally awesome if you want to have an audience of dudes in berets who smoke clove cigarettes and girls who wear vintage dresses with combat boots. What we’re talking about here is making her a star. You can’t do that with one poorly tuned acoustic guitar.” He turned to Kate. “No offense.”
“None taken,” she said, which was a lie.
“Let’s mess around with it a little,” Johnny said. “It’ll be fun.”
They started by muting her guitar track, so all that was left was her voice, which, when they played it back again, sounded strange and alone.
“All right, I think we need a drum loop—something simple, not too flashy. It’ll ground us.” Johnny leaned over a computer and poked at some keys.
“Give it some syncopation, though,” said Adam.
“We have preprogrammed beats,” Johnny explained to Kate. “We’ve got a ton of stuff right here and ready to go.”
Kate nodded. “Okay,” she said softly.
The drums came up and she tapped her foot to the beat; it was lively and bright. Playful. It wasn’t how she’d imagined her drums—well, actually she’d never really imagined drums. So, whatever. She could go with it.
As Johnny played around with the beat a bit more, Adam went to the keyboard and began to pick out a melody. “Something like this,” he said. “Then we’ll add a synth bass line. . . .”