Accidental It Girl (21 page)

He pulls away grinning slyly, and I'm left leaning against the railing with both hands—to keep myself from collapsing. Unfortunately, I don't think my wooziness has anything to do with my knee. (Though, the words
lip
and
wax
could have a little something to do with it.) I swear, there's some sort of black magic in all that winking and whispering and general…hotness.

Ethan breaks his gaze and resumes posing for the other photographers.

I'd love to shake my fists at him and scream, “You won't beat me!” but I can't. Just now, perched on my one good leg, trying desperately to see past a bluish polka-dotted haze, and contemplating the fact that a wickedly hot man knows I get my lip waxed—I have to say, I feel the slightest bit beaten.

Oh, and guess what…I didn't get a single shot of Ethan Wyatt.

I hear a grunt from over my shoulder and turn to identify its source. Phil.

His beady, bloodshot eyes glare directly into mine. One of his eyebrows raises up. He's suspicious. Very suspicious.

I suddenly feel the overwhelming need to defend myself, to deflect his curiosity. “Damn actors,” I say, trying to sound venomous. “Threatening me with lawsuits. Huh!
Idiots.
” That was really unconvincing. I may have just cranked his suspicion
up
instead of decreasing it. Shit, I really should have paid more attention in the one acting class I took in college. Unfortunately, as it is, I didn't learn much beyond the lyrics to
Annie Get Your Gun
.

 

The celebrities are all inside. I think I'm going to go home and take a long hot bath and let Jason Mraz sing me into a bubbly coma.

I lumber down the abandoned red carpet and, almost to the sidewalk, I nearly lose my lunch.

My mother is sitting behind the wheel of her Mercedes, just off to the left of the VIP arrival point.

She rolls down the passenger's side window and leans over the center console. “Hi, darling! I thought I'd surprise you and give you a ride home. Fancy some dinner? My treat!”

My mommy came to pick me up from work.

I'm just about to ask her how she managed to make it through the many blockades that have been set up to keep out the riffraff when Paige looks over my shoulder and gives a flirtatious little wave to someone behind me.

I turn around to see a very large member of the security team wave back at her—and blush. Ah, I see.

“I guess—” Oh, crap. The faint tinkle of electronic ringing issues from inside my bag. I give my mom the “hold on” finger point and quickly retrieve the phone. It's my PR contact from inside.

“Hey,” I grumble, trying to sound tired.

“Thought you'd wanna know, Ethan Wyatt is on his way out of the building,” comes the voice through the line.

“Which door?”

“Back.”

“Good, thanks,” I reply.

I turn my attention back to Paige.

“Okay,” I say to her. “You stay here. I'll be right back.”

“Sadie!” she calls, as I do my best to hobble away quickly. I'm going to get a picture of Ethan Wyatt's face if it kills me—this time, with my eyes open.

Behind me I hear a car door slam and my mother's voice tittering, “Would you be a dear? Won't be a sec, thanks!”

I look back to see her handing her car keys to the burly, blushing security guy and skipping in her Manolos toward me.

I stop dead in my tracks. “Mother, seriously. You need to stay here. I'll only be a minute, I promise. Then you can take me wherever you want. Just stay here.”

“You're injured. You need help with those bags,” she says while ripping my camera bag off my shoulder and strong-arming the collapsible stool from my hand. “I'll be your assistant!”

My assistant is wearing three-inch heels and a four-hundred-dollar cashmere sweater.

We make our way to the back of the building just in time to see Ethan Wyatt signing autographs for a couple of cater-waiters.

“Okay, I mean it—you have to stay here. No matter what happens, just don't move. I'll come back for you in a minute. All right?”

“Is that Ethan Wyatt?” Not exactly the response I was looking for.

“Yes. Are you going to stay here or—”

She shoves the camera bag and stool at me and rolls up her sleeves as though preparing for a fight. She marches away—in the direction of Ethan Wyatt.

Since she just claimed to be my assistant, does that mean I can fire her now?

As the waiters trudge back into the theater, eBay fodder in hand, Ethan lights a cigarette and descends a set of concrete steps to street level.

“Paige!” I yell.

She doesn't skip a beat.

“Mother!”

Still heading straight for him.

“Is that you, Price?” he says, shielding his eyes from the stark white light illuminating the side of the theater.

Paige closes in on Ethan's position, and I do my best to increase my speed.

“Hello!” I hear my mother say while holding out her hand. “My name is Paige. I believe we've spoken?”

Ethan takes her hand and smiles at her brightly.

My mother continues, “So, you're the man who's stalking my daughter.”

“I am,” he says proudly.

Oh, my God, this is humiliating. The next thing you know she'll be asking Ethan for his mother's phone number so they can discuss his inappropriate behavior.

Paige appraises him like you would a dog show entrant, examining his hind quarters, quantifying the luster of his coat. “You don't
look
particularly crazy,” she says with a coquettish air.

“Thank you, Mrs.—is it Price?”

“Price-Farmer, actually. But please, call me Paige.”

I finally hobble into striking distance. I lean over to my mother and whisper, “What do you think you're doing?”

She lays one of her well-manicured hands on my shoulder and says, “It's fine, sweetheart. Trust your mother.”

Yeah, that'll happen. I whisper back, “Are you
crazy
?” (That's number two, if you're counting.)

“Mr. Wyatt, my daughter is a very strong-willed individual.”

“I'm aware of that,” Ethan replies. With nothing but three cubic feet of humid air between us, his eyes suddenly lock onto mine. His eyes are doing that somewhat breathtaking boy-girl thing again, like I'm not the bane of his existence but just a person—a person that he just might like a little bit.

I do the only thing I can think to do—I look away.

Paige resumes, “I don't have to tell you, then, the sorts of things she would like to do to you in return for this vendetta of yours.”

“Mother—” I try again.

“I think I can guess,” he says—still smiling at me and not even glancing toward Paige.

“Just stop,” I whisper to Paige, begging.

She waves her hand to shush me. “Mr. Wyatt, I completely understand your frustration with Sadie's behavior. The picture of you that recently appeared in
Celeb
was beyond intrusive—”

“Mother!” I yelp, trying to grab her arm as she and Ethan begin calmly strolling toward the sidewalk.

I struggle to keep up. Limping as I am with two armloads of gear.

Paige continues, “To be honest, I have often thought Sadie would have been better off sticking with her first passion…”

Oh, no! “Don't!” I hiss to her.

“Art photography.
Portraits,
” she says, raising an eyebrow as though fully expecting Ethan to be impressed. “She did such beautiful work…once.” Oh, my God. “She had an amazing talent.”

Had
an amazing talent? What, did my talent just up and walk out the door on me? Desert me like some fickle boyfriend?

“Paige!”
I exclaim with venom. “You need to—”

But my words get tangled with Ethan's. With his voice dripping in self-satisfied curiosity, he asks, “Portraits? Really?”

As usual, Paige's attention is completely beyond my grasp. She is arm in arm with a handsome man of wealth and consequence—I don't stand a chance.

“Oh, yes. She has a website. Look it up on the Internet.”

This just gets better and better. If I'd been the one to throw that in his face, it'd be one thing. But my mother? With the caveat that my talent has suddenly vanished? With the snarky disapproval of all the work I've done since?

Paige resumes the humiliation. “Sadie has had a few trials in her life that precipitated this—”

“Oh, my God, Mother. What happened to the ignoring plan? You're off point.
Way
off point,” I plead.

“As I said, I fully understand your frustration,” she continues—completely ignoring me. “But I fail to see what justice or relief hurting my daughter will bring to you or those lovely young ladies you were involved with.”

Ethan takes a deep breath. He stops, looks at me—thinking. “Paige, your daughter is…unique.” He turns to Paige. “She's good at what she does. It just so happens that what she does hurts people—namely
me
. That shot in
Celeb
was—” He cuts himself off and takes a long drag of his cigarette. “It was the last straw, in a very long line of straws.” Ethan looks around and exhales silvery smoke into the night air. “I just want Sadie to understand what it feels like to be on the other side of that lens. To see what it really means to do what she does. I'm sure it sounds petty. And, trust me, revenge is not something I do, usually. But giving her a taste of that makes me feel just a little bit better. So, I can't promise you that I'll stop. At least, not now.”

My stomach turns, but not because he says he won't stop. It's the thing about how I hurt him—that boyish doe-eyed look about him as he said it. That's what got to me.

Obviously frustrated, but trying to control his emotions, Ethan aggressively shoves his hands in his pockets. As he flips his jacket back, he again reveals that tiny little patch of flesh above his belt. For some reason I can't take my eyes off it.

“I see, then, that we're at an impasse,” replies Paige with a demure little nod of her head. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wyatt,” she adds, holding her hand out once more.

“No, the pleasure is mine,” he replies, shaking her hand.

A pleasure to meet the man who's stalking me? A pleasure to meet Paige? These people are lunatics!

Stunned, and possibly slipping into mortification-induced shock, I stand at the edge of the sidewalk and watch Ethan slide into the back of a waiting limousine.

My heart sinks suddenly, remembering something…I didn't get a picture….

The light from the streetlamps stings my eyes, red and dry as they are from the assault in the pen.

Paige comes to my side and caresses my arm. “Well,” she says, “that's unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate?” I say, shrugging off her caress and dropping my camera bag and stool to the ground.
“Unfortunate?”

“Sadie, calm down.”

“You just completely humiliated me. It may only be about the nine millionth time you've humiliated me in my life, but to him?
Now?
You're a fucking fruitcake, you know that?”

“Language, dear,” she says calmly.

“God! And I had talent
once
? How do you always know exactly the worst possible moment to say these things? Did you have to train somewhere for that?”

Her eyes fill with phony concern. It's the same look she used to give me when I'd sulk, and sometimes cry, from her little mother-daughter exhibitions. She tries, “Sadie, I—”

“No. No! You can't manipulate me anymore. Why can't you just stop trying to make me feel bad? God!”

“I came here to help you,” Paige exclaims, with what looks alarmingly like real shock. “That's what I'm doing.”

“If you really want to help me, you'll let me be!”

I grab my gear from the ground and race out onto Seventh Avenue.

M
y mother has a real talent for turning me back into a bitter, angsty teenager,” I tell Luke as we sit on the floor of my bedroom flipping through some of my old portfolios. “For years I've done everything I can think of to keep things relatively nonviolent between us, and then
boom
, one suspiciously giant box and a few little words later and I'm back to screaming at her.” And digging through the clutter under my bed to find my old portfolios. Damn, she's sneaky.

Luke turns the page of my sophomore portfolio and stares at a photograph of the chefs in the old restaurant my dad worked in. “Hating your job is, like, the last thing parents are allowed to fight with us about. It's the one thing left that won't get them dragged onto
Dr. Phil
for being bad parents. I promise you, fear of Dr. Phil is a major motivation in my mom's life.”

“Please. Paige would chew up Dr. Phil like a stick of gum,” I grumble. “I wish I could just crawl inside her head and figure out what her damage is.” Actually, on second thought, it'd probably be pretty scary in there—all sequins, and Botox, and dog show statistics.

“Wow, this one's nice,” Luke says, opening up my senior portfolio and pointing at a portrait I did of an old roommate.

“You just like it 'cause she's hot,” I reply, looking over his shoulder.

“Maybe…” he replies sheepishly.

I inspect the portrait. God, I'd forgotten how piercing her eyes were. Staring at her in real life, you always had the sense you were being measured, judged. In the black and white of her photo, her eyes are even more penetrating, and yet, somehow, betray just the tiniest hint of vulnerability.

It's exciting to take a photograph of someone you know—someone whose face is so incredibly familiar to you—and capture that tiny fraction of a moment when they are being utterly themselves. We're used to seeing our friends in color, used to the distraction of their day-to-day armor—jewelry, makeup, fashion. We rely on intonation and hand gestures to tell us what we need to know about their state of mind. Essentially, we rely on
them
to tell us who they are. The beauty of black and white is that it erases all that; all the extraneous clues about emotion and convention are stripped away. It's pure. The pictures I always wanted to take, the ones I tried to take before I got into the paparazzi stuff, were about seeing beyond what people want us to think they are, and somehow capturing a flicker of the truth. I sometimes miss that.

“You know what really pisses me off?” I ask Luke.

“What?” he replies.

“She made it sound like I consciously gave up on the portraits. I mean, what does she think? That I just sat down one day and said, ‘I'm not going to do this anymore'?”

Luke says, “I—”

“…Because I didn't. It just…drifted away. It happens. The portraits were eventually this thing that I'm always meaning to do but can never seem to find the time for…like clearing old clothes from the closet, or dusting the crown molding in the living room. It happened naturally….”

Luke tries, “Sadie, I—”

But I'm on a roll. “…And then, I got comfortable with my life without it. Big deal. Is being comfortable that bad? I like my life. It works. You know? Seriously,…”

Luke interjects, “Hey, I just—”

“…why is my life now any less noble or important because I'm not poor and artistic? Why is following your dream so much more—”

“Sadie!” Luke shouts. “Slow your roll there, Killer.” He ogles me with an uneasy sort of grimace. “Who are you trying to convince here? Me…or
you
?”

“Uh…” I stutter. “I'm not trying to convince anyone.” I don't think. “I don't know.”

I stare down at the portfolios splayed out on the floor—lying on a small area rug that I bought with my first check from Todd.

Luke blurts, “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—”

“No, you were right to stop me,” I say.

“Are you gonna be all right?” Luke asks, suddenly looking concerned.

“Sure,” I reply.

“Are you?” he prods, a little crinkle appearing between his eyes. “You've got that weird, sad, faraway look you get sometimes.”

I gawk at him, confused. “I get a weird, sad, faraway look sometimes?”

Luke reaches over to a pile of magazines and newspapers—a chronological stack of my meteoric rise to phony fame. He leafs through the top five or six issues and pulls out a copy of
Celeb
from last week.

He flips through the sheets, finding the page with my picture. With a bit of a sad, faraway look of his own, he hands it over.

It's a picture of me in the subway station after the autograph and the investment banker. I'm walking toward the exit, but my head is turned back—looking over my shoulder toward Ethan and his camera.

Huh. I do look sort of sad.

I didn't know I did that.

“I do that a lot, you say?” I ask Luke, feeling a bit like this picture should be hidden somewhere very dark and dusty.

Luke replies softly, “Yeah.”

 

Luke has left for work, and I've renewed the giant Brown Box inspection process. It's pointless, of course, but I can't help myself.

A knock comes at my bedroom door.

Maybe it's Brooke. Maybe she has food.

I roll off the bed and open the door.

Not Brooke.

“What do you want now?” I ask Paige.

“May I come in?” she asks while maneuvering her slender body past me and entering the room.

“Sure,” I say sarcastically, throwing my hands up in defeat.

Paige delicately arranges her hair behind her ears and turns to face me. I watch as her eyes land on the giant box and then self-consciously look to me. “Oh,” she says. “You still haven't opened it.”

“No, I haven't,” I spit—hoping to hurt her.

“Sadie,” she begins prodigiously, “I realize that what I did this evening may be perceived as unorthodox, and that it might have been unpalatable to you. But to be frank, this mess you've gotten yourself into isn't exactly the kind of thing Emily Post can prepare you for.”

Unable to control myself, I roll my eyes.

She watches my face contort, then continues, “I realize that you're angry with me—”

“I have every right to be. You completely humiliated me tonight—”

As usual, Paige interrupts. “I realize that since you were a
little girl,
you have been angry with me.”

Her reference to the past stuns me into absolute silence. She never talks about the past—ever. Paige is not the kind of person who looks back with regret on the things she's done in her life. No, forget regret, she doesn't look back
at all
.

Paige takes a seat on the end of my bed and places her hands on her knees. “I'm trying.”

“Trying what, exactly?” I ask, straining to maintain composure.

“I realize that I haven't been the best mother to you. Things between us have never been quite…right. I see now that, in large part, it's been my doing.”

I have no idea what to say to that. I have never heard her admit to anything so unflattering.

She continues, “I know that I can't make up for the way I treated you. I was so very selfish and insensitive. I also know that it may not be possible for you to forgive me. But I would like—if it's possible—to know you.”

“
Know
me?” I ask, genuinely confused.

“Thanks to your father, you are a wonderful person. I would like to know you better. And I was wondering if, perhaps, you might be willing to get to know me a little, too.”

I don't know what to say to that. Had this speech come at age eleven or twelve I probably would have leaped into her arms joyously. But at twenty-eight? I mean, is she looking to have someone absolve her guilt?

Apparently sensing my apprehension, she adds, “You don't have to love me. That's not what I'm asking. I want to try and be a better person to you…for you. In short, I'm trying.”

I don't feel like I can stand any more.

I slump down into the chair by my dresser, nearly knocking over the brown monolith. The room falls silent, with me feeling dizzy and my mother staring at her shoes.

There's a hint of sadness in her eyes that I don't think I've ever seen before. Despite all my better judgment, and all the lessons I learned growing up, it makes me really want to believe her.

“Why now?” I ask.

Paige takes a deep, cleansing breath. “For whatever reason, Sadie, things become clearer as you get older. And I've realized some things over the last few years.” She pauses, turns her attention back to the unopened gift she gave me. “You know that old saying about how it's never too late to turn over a new leaf, to start over? Well, it hit me one day—that's a complete load of
crap
.” My mother just said “crap.” This is serious. “I always said to myself, ‘Someday things will get better between Sadie and me,' ‘Someday we'll have a proper relationship,' and then I turned fifty and thought…
when
?” Her eyes meet mine. “I am not getting any younger, Sadie. And our time here is finite. It
can
be too late. Sometimes you have to take risks, leap into the unknown. Otherwise questions and regrets will hang over you—like a cloud.”

Doesn't she know she's talking to the queen of dark little clouds? The very definition of “When it rains, it pours”?

No. I guess she doesn't. That's sort of her point, isn't it?

My mother raises her head and her eyes lock on the Brown Box. More specifically, they bore into the patch of sticky, fuzzy brown paper left from removing her note. Paige says, “You know, I do worry about you. Doing this job. Not taking the portraits anymore. It's not that I think you've lost your talent, darling. I just think you're not using it to its full potential. I hate it when people aren't giving everything to achieve their full potential—”

My glare hardens and aims somewhere between the bridge of her nose and her left eye. “I love my job!”

“I know you do. I know. But what has it done to you, Sadie? How is it affecting you? What is it, do you think, that Ethan Wyatt is trying to show you?”

“You're on his side now?” I yell. “I thought you—”

“I'm on
your
side!” she roars. She clasps her hands together and grits her teeth, as though forcing herself to be calm. She takes a deep breath. Her tone softens. “I wasn't the best example to you. I was…” She looks out the window at my little patch of sky, to the place where the stars should be. “I have made mistakes, regretted the choices I've made. I don't want to see you do the same.” Her pale blue eyes lock onto mine. Their characteristic iciness melts away before me. “I get the feeling that you're running away from something instead of toward something better.”

“You've always hated what I do,” I spit.

“The reasons, Sadie…the reasons have changed.”

I shake my head. “But it's still all about you, isn't it?”

“Sadie Anne Price,” Paige says, in that staccato way that mothers do when they're preparing to administer a stern scolding, “this may be hard for you to hear, but I did not make the decision for you to enter this career. It is not my fault that you are in this mess right now. I take responsibility for what I've done—my part in your…your…way of looking at the world. But I won't sit back and watch you founder. I'm here for
you.
My methods may occasionally annoy you, and you may disagree with me and my ideas. But I love you. Truly. Do you understand? I worry that what you're doing with your life you may one day look back on with regret. You have so many things to offer the world. So, so many…”

A tear falls from my mother's eye and down her cheek. She doesn't touch it. Her makeup is running, her skin is pale and imperfect, and she isn't raising a hand to fix it.

She looks at me again, with her eyes full, and adds, “I wish you would stop hating me. Not because I need you to forgive me, but because it's hurting
you
!”

Paige gets up from her perch on my bed and walks through the door. Moments later, I hear the front door open and close.

I stare at the unopened gift teetering precariously against my rickety old dresser.

My mother wants to know me.

I really didn't see that coming.