HDU (3 page)

Or so she thought.
 

Attached to the latest email was a video file.
 
Amanda blinked, frozen with
surprise.
 
The screencap was blank,
giving her no preview of what lay ahead.
 
Her mouse hovered over the play button as she tried to compose herself
and suppress curiosity.
 
It’s a virus, you idiot.
 
You’ll lose everything.
 
Don’t click on it
.

She clicked on it.

“Hey PrettyKitty.”

A low voice spoke before any picture appeared on
screen, but soon enough, the black frame flickered into the image of a New York
Yankees cap.
 
As the blurriness cleared,
Amanda realized that the cap was sitting atop a man’s head, his head tilted
downward so that it obstructed his face.
 
Amanda rolled her eyes, but just as she had concluded that she’d in fact
been had, the capped head looked up at the camera.

“Let’s do this again.
 
Hi, I’m Liam Brody.”
 

Amanda’s heart stopped – or so she thought.
 
She gasped so hard that cold air ripped
through her chest.
 
There he was
– the real Liam Brody with his messy brown hair, thick eyebrows, perfect
nose and rude smirk.
 
His famously
dark eyes laughed at her as he paused his speech, seeming to let her take him
in for a moment.
 
For a split
second, she was flashed back to watching his first starring role in a romantic
comedy at the local AMC with Megan.
 
That was when Megan first fell in love.

“Before I say anything, I’ll start with the
obvious.
 
If you post this video to
your website, I won’t care,” he said, smug.
 
“But then of course, my offer will be off the table.”
 
He leaned back in his chair, stretching
casually as if he made video bribe offers all the time.
 
When he returned to his posture, he
sighed.
 
“Alright, here’s the
story, Pretty.”

Amanda blushed.
 
She then covered her own cheeks, embarrassed by herself yet again.
 
Only FilmFreak shortened her username
to just “Pretty,” and it was fine when he did because it was his lazy
Internet-speak.
 
But hearing the
word come out of Liam Brody’s mouth made her momentarily giddy.
 
She couldn’t even help it.
 
Guess
he’s a good actor after all.

“I’m not sure if you’ve heard of an upcoming movie
called
A Soldier
,” Liam said,
scratching his chin.
 
He seemed to
be growing out some facial hair, as if he needed to look manlier.
 
After that thought passed, Amanda
realized that she had in fact heard of
A
Soldier
because her favorite actor in the world, Dylan Hardy, had been
briefly up for the role.
 
“It’s an
incredible script about John Parker Camden, a Pararescue jumper in Iraq.
 
Based on a true story, too.
 
He was from Nebraska – the model
soldier, husband, father.
 
An
absolute hero,” Liam said.
 
For a
moment, he seemed lost in thought and his eyes drifted elsewhere.
 
Look
at me, I’m so thoughtful and forlorn
, Amanda narrowed her own eyes at the
screen.
 
Mm-hm.
 
Definitely a good
actor.

“You might’ve guessed at this point that I’m in the
process of auditioning for this role – against some pretty heavy
competition.
 
But I know I’m the
only one who can do the part justice, and it’s not just because I’ve dreamt of
working with Terrence Rambis since I was a kid watching
Bouncing Betty
– which was his first ever war movie, in case
it sounds to you like a porno or something.”

It did.
 
A snort escaped Amanda’s lips, forcing her own hand to fly to
her mouth.
 
She silenced herself,
not about to let his act entertain or fool her.
 
Playing likeable was his job, and he was a charmer by
nature.
 
It was the only reason
women continued falling for him despite his dating history.
 
Amanda straightened her face and studied
his facial mannerisms before he continued speaking.
 
His eyes drifted elsewhere again and he gave a short,
laughing smile.

“Me and my older brother Logan swore we’d join the
Air Force together after watching that movie.
 
We were eight and ten back then, but he actually went
through with it,” Liam said.
 
As he
did, Amanda Googled “Logan Brody air force.”
 
The results she found echoed the words that Liam spoke.
 
“Pararescue training has a ninety
percent washout rate but Logan made it through.
 
And since then, he and his units have saved so many lives in
Iraq and Afghanistan that it’s sometimes hard to comprehend.
 
The admiration I have for him is
something I can only hope I’ll inspire in someone at some point.
 
Maybe my kid, if I have one.
 
In the future.
 
Who knows.”
 
Liam cleared his throat.
 
“That’s why it would mean so much for me to land this role
because aside from working with a legend, I’d be honoring two amazing men
– John Parker Camden and my brother, Logan.”

Amanda blinked at the screen.
 
For a moment, she had forgotten where
she was and why she was hearing the story.
 
It was surreal to remind herself that it was being told
solely for her.

“But getting back to the point, Pretty,” Liam looked
directly into the camera, making Amanda want to lower her eyes.
 
“It’s hard to get a second audition for
such a dignified role when America knows you best as a…” he clicked around his
computer for a bit and squinted, reading off of his screen.
 
“A ‘womanizing douchelord.’”

Amanda snorted loudly.
 
She had been the first one to peg him as such on HDU, and
for some reason, “womanizing douchelord” just caught on with users.
 
It became his official nickname, and he
their mascot of misogyny.

“And finally, to explain why you didn’t receive an
email from my publicist – it’s because she was against this idea.
 
She’s by the books, but I’m going behind
her back for the first time because I’ve never wanted anything more in my life
than I want this role, and I’ll do anything for the things that I want.”
 
Liam bit his lip back for a split second
before adopting his demeanor of confidence once again.
 
He smiled, another smirk this
time.
 
“So, let me know, Pretty, if
that explanation suffices.”

Abruptly, the video ended.
 
Only then did Amanda hear her heart pounding.
 
Had it been the whole time?
Probably.
 
She had just had her
first celebrity encounter, and it was nothing she could have ever imagined
– and she often did a great deal of imagining what her first celebrity
encounter would be like.
 
Though in
her fantasies, it was with the sweet and adorable Dylan Hardy, not the sleazy
and manipulative Liam Brody.
 
More
than anything now, Amanda found Liam manipulative.

She had been so ready to post his video directly to
HDU, to singlehandedly bring down his image as she had already been doing.
 
But then he started speaking.
 
Acting
.
 
His moves were so clever, so deft.
 
Those humble smiles, the thoughtful
gazing.
 
The story about his
brother and
Bouncing Betty
.
 
She would be doing him the biggest PR
favor in the world if she posted his video to HDU, and he knew it considering
the smirk he had allowed himself towards the end of the message.
 
He knew what a winning performance he
had just given, and so did Amanda.
 
She also knew her users.
 
Most would be easily swayed by the seeming image of a bad boy gone good
for his country.
 
She wasn’t going
to let that happen.
 
He would have
to
pay
her for that kind of
publicity.

But of course, he was offering to and she simply
couldn’t accept it.
 
Moderating HDU
was all she had anymore, and while she had only been in contact with the people
that owned HDU via email, she felt loyal and obliged to them.
 
Once upon a time, she had been just an
obsessive user of the site with far too much time on her hands, until her
devoted Internet stalking was rewarded with an actual job by the owners who
needed a new and inexpensive moderator.
 
At the age of nineteen, she was controlling the public images of stars
by what she allowed or didn’t allow onto the site.
 
It was beyond thrilling to know that people – even
celebrities, whether they admitted it or not – were tuning into HDU from
all parts of the world.
 
And all
because of the posts she put up in Merit, Missouri.
 
The power she had made the $200 a month paycheck worth
it.
 
It was better than the $150
she started with.
 
By her third
year, she had been granted a raise because of her status as by far the post
popular moderator on HDU, liked best for strangely enough, being
nice
.
 
Perhaps that was why users put so much trust in her hatred
of Liam Brody – he was the one person she loathed, so it
had
to be for good reason.

After several minutes of groaning and swearing and
calling downstairs to her mother that she was fine, really just fine, Amanda
began to compose a response in her head.
 
With her jaw clenched tight, she started typing.

Mr. Brody,

If you don’t land the role of John
Parker Camden, please take comfort in the solid performance you just gave me in
your video, which would be Oscar-worthy were it something that I was willing to
share with the world.

Alas, it isn’t.
 
Sorry to disappoint – I could
tell that you threw some extra charm in there just in case you ended up on
HDU.
 
Unfortunately, they’ll never
see this video and I still won’t censor the types of stories I post about you,
so your project was in vain.
 
If
it’s any comfort, I doubt Terrence Rambis would care about your public image as
a womanizing douchelord if you were actually a good actor who was right for the
part.
 
Maybe you just don’t strike
anyone as a small town family man, and maybe it has nothing to do with the fact
that you date six swimsuit models at the same time.
 
Maybe it’s just you.
 

If you’re really hell-bent on
reversing your image, perhaps you should you just pluck out a plain Jane from
some grocery store and make her your wife.
 
The uglier, the better.

Best,

PK

It was necessary to remove herself from the house
after sending her last response to Liam Brody, even if it meant going out in
public and seeing neighbors.
 
If
she didn’t, she would do nothing but sit on her bed with her laptop, staring at
her inbox and refreshing it over and over and over.
 
It wasn’t a routine too different from her usual, but on
this particular day, she would be doing it with an urgency that would probably
give her a brain aneurysm or something.

She was too distracted to care about the fact that
she’d unconsciously driven to L.J’s Diner.
 
As she sat alone in a booth, mindlessly chowing down on a
slinger, she thought about Liam.
 
The
worst she could do to him was to continue posting stories of his
infidelities.
 
But he was still an
A-List celebrity, despite his reputation as a complete and utter asshole.
 
There was little more damage Amanda
could do, and she found that disheartening.
 
The fact that she couldn’t destroy Liam Brody
actually
upset her.

“Who raised you?”

It was a good question.
 
Her parents certainly didn’t bring her up to be so
hateful.
 
Only as Amanda
contemplated the answer did she realize that the inquiry had come from an
actual voice, not one inside her head.
 
She snapped her head up.

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Mueller,” she said politely,
expertly hiding her dread.
 
Tandy
Mueller was the friendliest and rudest person that Amanda knew.
 
She was Merit’s chattiest neighbor, an
impressive title considering the stiff competition.

“Darling, I know your mother did better than to raise
a child who comes into L.J’s of all places and ignores everybody trying to say
‘hello!’” Tandy’s manic smile no doubt hid her true disapproval of Amanda’s
behavior.
 
“We just about fell off our
chairs when you walked in, Mandy!”
 
She reached out and played with a lock of Amanda’s auburn hair before
stroking her cheek.
 
Amanda tried
not to recoil.
 
“Sweetheart,
how
on Earth are we supposed to hear stories
about your adventures in St. Louis when you’ve got yourself holed up in that
house every day? You can’t possibly expect us to get them from Megan.
 
That gorgeous girl’s got a life to live!”