HDU (35 page)

And so the afternoon was spent shopping.
 
While weeding through racks of
intimidating dresses, Amanda again missed Ian, who had once been her shopping
buddy – her everything buddy.
 
She thought about calling Casey but was a little fearful of the
possibility of having to talk about Dylan.
 
Hopefully, Casey had forgotten that she’d been hell-bent on
facilitating a hook-up between them.
 
As beautiful and adorable as Amanda would forever find Dylan, she wanted
to make her relationship with Liam look good, and flirting with someone else
would only let down America.
 
Liamanda fans wanted to see them work, and while they would
contractually break up within a month, at least Liam would have a noble excuse
of being shipped off to the Middle East for seven weeks.

“Oh my gosh, Amanda freakin’ Nathan! Are you shopping
for the Critic’s Choice Awards?” a loud voice asked.
 
Amanda spun around to see a salesgirl in her early twenties,
dropping the pile of clothes in her hand to rush over.

“Yeah... how’d you know? I only just found out,”
Amanda laughed.
 
The salesgirl whipped
out her rhinestone-encrusted phone.

“Oh, I have alerts and it just said that Liam’s going
to be a last-minute presenter and I thought, ‘Omigod, Amanda gets to go to L.A.
for the first time!’” she explained a mile a minute.
 
Off Amanda’s quizzical look, the salesgirl covered her
mouth.
 
“Omigod, was that creepy?
Ha!” She was unabashed.
 
“I know
you haven’t been to L.A. because I read your Wiki and it says that before
coming to New York, you’d only been to Missouri and Illinois.”

“I have a Wikipedia page?” Amanda’s eyes widened.
 
She was about to ask herself how anyone
knew where she had and hadn’t been before, but then she remembered that the
information had been on her Facebook before she’d deactivated it.
 

“You totes do, and I read it, and I’m not ashamed to
admit that I also have you on Google Alerts,” the salesgirl chortled.
 
“I love reading about your life because
it’s what I fantasized mine would be like when I moved here.”
 
She bared her teeth jokingly.
 
“
Grr
,
that never happened, but at least I can live vicariously through you!”

Amanda laughed and let the boisterous salesgirl show
her around the store while rattling off her favorite moments from Amanda’s
life.
 
It was surreal and a little
bit uncomfortable, but she let her do it because shopping alone was too
difficult.
 
She was still in the
process of developing any sense of fashion.
 
Luckily, the salesgirl was as good at styling as she was at
talking and Amanda was able to quickly leave the store with a special pick from
next season that she was quite satisfied with.

“Thank you,” she called over her shoulder on the way
out.

“You’re so welcome! And please just keep doing your
thing girl, because I’m a huge, huge fan!”

“Oh! Thanks.
 
Sorry about not blogging lately, though.”

The salesgirl shook her head.
 
“Oh, I don’t even read that shit, I
just like seeing you go out with Liam and shop with Casey and go to all those
fancy parties – it’s every girl’s
dream
.”
 
She stretched the word out so it
sounded like “
juh- ream
.”
 
“Oh, oh, and one more thing! I’m really
glad you dropped that crazy friend of yours.
 
Ian? Marsh? Hot mess.
 
He’s going to get a lot of shit for what he did today.”

Amanda stopped in the doorway.
 
She turned on her heel and squinted.
 
“What did he do?”

The salesgirl’s eyes opened wide.
 
“Omigod, you don’t know! I got it on my
alerts.
 
He made another one of
those movies and it’s… disgusting.
 
You just have to see it.”

IAN
MARSH’S SECOND FILM A DISGRACEFUL DUD

Filmmaker
releases ‘artistic’ sex tape with girlfriend Desiree Silver

Indie Grind

February 9

Well this is certainly a whole new take on “viral”
video.
 

Ian Marsh’s sophomore effort in filmmaking debuted
this afternoon, and it appears the young artist is venturing into the porn
industry – or something like it.
 
Marsh’s second film is a seedy twenty-three minutes of obscure close-ups
and out-of-focus medium shots filled with a chorus of moaning, groaning and
grunting.
 
To be completely honest,
even the porn industry would reject this flop of a film.
 
You don’t really see anything, but
judging from Desiree Silver and Marsh’s disturbing sex sounds, you kind of
don’t want to anyway.

So how did the promising young artist go so wrong
after the genius of his first video? Plain and simple, it was too long, too
pretentious, and following a legend like Casey Mulreed with a failed actress
like Silver is never a good move.
 
Not to mention, a glorified sex tape is just about the weakest attempt
at art and innovation that we’ve ever seen.
 

It’s too bad.
 
You had potential, Ian Marsh.
 
You’ve got the looks of James Dean and you’re probably a good kid, but
it’s time to sober up and realize that having burned all your A-list bridges,
you’re going back to nowhere fast.

A television playing CNN in one of the airport
restaurants flashed the image of Ian and Desiree above the text:
Too Much Too Soon? An overnight star’s
humiliating crash and burn.
 
Amanda tried not to stare at the screen for too long, knowing well that
everyone else in the airport was staring at
her
.

“Come on,” Liam said quietly, putting his hand under
her chin to turn her face back to him.
 
“Just ignore it.
 
You’re
going to L.A, you can’t worry about him now if you want to.”

“I feel guilty,” Amanda murmured.
 
After watching the film – or
rather, watching the first grunt-filled minute before fast forwarding to the
end – she had stalked the Internet to see what everyone was saying about
Ian.
 
In the past few weeks, she’d
worried about him but had been fine knowing that a pack of crazy stans was
lingering in every comment section to defend him.
 
Now she was afraid that even they had turned on him for
making the fatal mistake of trying too hard.
 
It wouldn’t be a surprise considering the horrible Top Tweets
she spotted on Twitter.
 

They were posted by familiar faces – Ian’s supposed
friends, The Edgy Kids, those stupid, pretentious stylists and cinematographers
who had been riding his coattails for the past few weeks, getting into every
club VIP because of Ian.
 
Now they
were lambasting him, making fun of him, posting the most vile and malicious
comments about him – all for the sake of retweets and the hope of their
own fifteen minutes.

Ian thought the
best way to win back his ex-gf Natalie Bell was a sex tape. Total waste since
no one believes he dated her in the first place.

Really
impressed with Ian’s shitty film – didn’t think he could last 23 min in
bed! Des told me he’s a one-minute man.

edited out of
the video: ian secretly drunk dialing Natalie while doing des from behind. he
srsly drunk dials her every nite ppl!! STALKERRR!

It wasn’t hard to guess that The Edgy Kids no longer
counted Ian as a friend.
 
Amanda
wondered who was looking after him now and making sure he didn’t do anything to
get himself killed.
 
She hoped that
Desiree Silver had stuck around – since breaking up with a wholesome pop
singer at sixteen, she had dated only bad boys and was known for loving
train-wrecks, or at least the attention they came with.
 
Hopefully she would take care of Ian
until Amanda got back to New York.
 

Though Amanda continued to fret throughout the
six-hour plane ride, emailing Ian a plea to contact her while imagining the
various scenarios in which he could send himself to the hospital, she
thankfully found peace upon landing.
 
After making their way through some paparazzi, Amanda and Liam hopped
into their car and cruised out to the palm tree-lined roads.
 
She momentarily forgot about Ian as she
asked herself if it was really the first time she had seen a palm tree in real
life.
 

Once they arrived at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset
Boulevard, Amanda was all smiles.
 
The
hotel looked to her like some sort of tropical cathedral.
 
She wished she weren’t too tired to
kick off her ankle boots, put on a pair of sandals, and just run around
exploring.
 
She’d gotten a fresh
pedicure and the crisp California air was such a perfect change from New York’s
winter weather.
 
She could make the
same comparison of her mood – twenty-five hundred miles later, she’d
transformed from completely agitated to bright and sunny.

“Here you are, Mr. Brody, your premier one-bedroom is
ready for you,” the desk clerk said with a smile as he handed over the room
key.
 
Liam turned to Amanda with
his lips curled up as they headed for the elevators.
 

“My publicist booked a one-bedroom,” he said.

“Okay?”

“How do you feel about that?”

Amanda rolled her eyes.
 
“Fine, since I get the bed.”

“Okay,” he agreed.
 
“But so do I.”
 
She laughed.

“We’ll see.”

Despite the bantering, it was nothing but yawning by
the time they reached the bedroom.
 
They both headed straight for the plush mattress, collapsing onto it and
kicking off their shoes at the same time.
 

“Are you tired?” Liam asked, rolling over to face
her.

“Mm-hm.”
 
She tried to wriggle out of her cardigan.
 
He held onto her sleeve for her as she tugged her arm
out.
 
“Are you?”

“Yeah.”
 
Amanda watched him as he pulled off his sweater.
 
She wondered if he planned on sleeping
in his T-shirt but then he pulled that off too, leaving himself down to only
jeans.
 
He peered up.
 
“Can I take my pants off?” he asked
with a crooked little smile.

“You may.”

He unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans.
 
Amanda closed her eyes as he did so
– not because she was shy, but because she was truly tired.
 
She cracked an eye open to peer at her
luggage all the way across the big room.
 
Yeah, no
, she decided, spurning
the idea of pajamas and reaching for the top of her own jeans.
 
She glanced at Liam, who was already under
the sheets with his eyes shut, though they fluttered open at the sound of her zipper
pulling down.
 
He raised an eyebrow
at her.
 
She yawned and raised one
back at him as she slid her pants past her hips and thighs, arching her back to
push them far down enough so they could be kicked the rest of the way off.
 
Liam remained silent as he watched her,
his eyes tired though his lips wore a little grin.
 
They shared a look for a bit longer before Amanda tugged her
camisole over her boy shorts and popped under the covers.

“Goodnight,” she said plainly, turning to her side
and facing away from Liam.
 
She
could feel his eyes on her back for several silent seconds before he let out a
low laugh.

“Get over here,” he said, wrapping an arm around her
waist and pulling her into his body.
 
Amanda smiled and let herself nestle back against his chest.
 
She rested her head under his chin and
closed her eyes once she felt his legs tuck behind hers.
 
And with their fingers intertwined,
they fell asleep.

~

heard you’re in
town hot mama.

With only six words, Casey’s text managed to make
Amanda nervous, though it was really just the last two that made her chew on
her lip.
 
Hot mama
.
 
Amanda
assumed the nickname was a nod towards the fact that Casey planned on forcing
something romantic to happen with Dylan tonight.
 
She hoped she was being irrational, but she suspected she
wasn’t.
 
She proved herself right
when after several minutes without responding, her phone vibrated again.
 
She prayed that it was Ian finally
returning her concerned messages, but once again, it was Casey.

hope you have a
sexy dress for tonight ;)

Amanda ignored the text and went to unpack her dress
from her luggage.
 
The loud
salesgirl had actually picked something perfect, perhaps because she followed
Amanda’s fashion choices so closely and knew exactly what her preferences were.
 
The lavender chiffon dress reached the
floor – which was good because her tan heels from Loehmann’s didn’t quite
match – and boasted diagonal tiers of delicate lace from the waist
down.
 
As usual, on top, the
neckline was high and left everything to the imagination.
 
It was classy and what Amanda
preferred.