HDU (46 page)

Amanda put her fingers to her forehead, trying to
unscramble her racing thoughts as she attempted to piece everything together.
 
“So that’s why you came looking for me
at the Critic’s Choice party?”

Ian winced as he nodded.
 
“I thought Casey might use her speech at the awards to make
the statement.
 
About her
addiction, since it was so appropriate and stuff.
 
Considering the movie.
 
I thought the after party could be my coming back out to the world, to
show them, like… the real me.
 
I don’t
know.”
 
He was quiet for a second,
smirking at himself.
 
“But she
didn’t say anything about the video when she won, so I knew that was it.
 
She wasn’t going to.”

Amanda peered over at him.
 
His face covered in shame, she reached out to pat his
shoulder, as if to tell him he could stop his story there.
 
Now was not the time to elicit an
apology from him about nearly giving Liam stitches.
 
She could wait on that.
 
But of course, he couldn’t.
 
He exhaled with a frown between his eyebrows.

“I’m sorry about him.
 
Liam.
 
I wish I
could tell him to his face.”
 
The
creases between his brows deepened as he shook his head slowly.
 
“I don’t know why my anger came out at
him the most when I was all fucked up.
 
I mean, he’s obviously a good guy underneath it all, or you wouldn’t
have cared about each other, and I could tell you did.
 
I just think I… visualized him as the
enemy.
 
From things Casey said.
 
Like to be extra careful about him
because he’s… what did she say… he’s
perceptive
.
 
He can sense lies.”

Amanda didn’t doubt it, though of course he hadn’t
sensed that she wanted him more than Dylan before breaking off their contract.
 
And suddenly, her heart twisted.
 
She missed Liam again.
 
She wanted nothing more than to tell
him he’d been right all along.
 
But
she couldn’t let herself think about him for long as the car slowed to a stop
and she and Ian got out, beginning the process of admitting him into the
hospital and making sure that everything was set before parting ways.
 
His head was bowed next to her ear as
they hugged, his forehead resting on his arms, which were folded limply around
her neck.

“Thank God for you,” was all he said when he pulled
away from her hug and they said goodbye.

And as she sat on the bench outside the hospital,
washed with relief over Ian, she couldn’t help also boiling in fury.

Directly after hanging up with Thea, Amanda flipped
her phone open once again, her shaking fingers barely able to punch the buttons
on the keypad as she dialed Casey.

AMANDA
NATHAN FIRED FROM JUNE MAGAZINE!

Pop Dinner

March 5

A spokesperson for June Magazine confirmed today that
Amanda Nathan no longer works for the company.
 
“To clarify, Miss Nathan was never a member of the staff.
 
She was hired for short term, freelance
work that may or may not have made the cut as content for the website or magazine.”

Hmm.
 
Nice try, but sources report that Nathan actually
did
sign a full-year contract with the women’s
glossy to work as an online contributor.
 
Of course, the fine print prohibited the blogger from ever shaming the
June name by acting like an embarrassing D-lister, which she of course did
Thursday night.
 
So badly that her
employers are pretending they never even hired her in the first place!
Ouch
.

And that’s how the cookie crumbles.
 
Looks like June Magazine is joining the
list of people trying to forget that they ever knew Messy Mandy!

- Chapter 15 -

The merry music coming from Casey’s loft worked to
further enrage Amanda as she rode up the elevator.
 
Before taking the train to Casey’s apartment, she had gone
home to quickly peruse the latest news pieces about her, to see if they offered
any clues as to why she’d planned her own downfall.

And there it was – in a simple article that
she’d actually seen the headline of a few days ago but never read.
 
It quickly made Casey’s actions so
transparent, so crystal clear – though only to people who knew what Amanda
knew, and the only other one of those people was Ian.

CASEY MULREED:
WORKING ON A TOP SECRET TELEVISION PILOT?

Some show of hers had finally been picked up.
 
The fact that it was
semi-autobiographical, along with the fact it had failed to garner any
network’s interest for years gave Amanda a clue as to why Casey planted scandal
around her addiction.
 
She needed to
pique interest, to legitimize whatever Hollywood hardships she’d be portraying
in her based-on-a-true-story TV drama.
 
She needed to prove that her show would be just as if not more riveting
than the similar show Wendy’s husband, Tom Vogel, had been planning for a year.
 
Essentially, as HDUers would say, she
needed to be less boringly perfect.
 
Releasing a simple statement about her problem would have been too
predictable, too much of a waste.
 
She needed to shock, to generate hype.
 
It didn’t matter at what cost.

“And look who finally showed up.”

Casey’s cooing condescension snapped Amanda from her
thoughts as the elevator doors opened.
 
She stood right before them, blithely stirring a mug of coffee in a silk
robe and harem pants.

“Come in, doll.”

Her jaw tight, Amanda stepped into the stark white
apartment.

“Can I get you something to – ”

“Stop it.”
 
Amanda held her hand in the air.
 
“Stop pretending you’re some nice, normal person.
 
I know everything.”

Casey smirked, rolling her eyes as she returned to
the kitchen.
 
“Uh yeah, I figured,
considering how you sounded on the phone.
 
Honestly, kind of shocked your crackhead friend really kept our secret
for so long.”
 
She set her mug on the
counter, casually looking through her cupboards.
 
Amanda fumed at her flippant mention of Ian.

“Unlike you, he keeps promises.”

Casey twisted open a glass jar and dropped a single
sugar cube into her coffee.
 
“I
know.
 
I got a good feel for him
when he was at Jamie’s birthday party. Decently talented, kind of cocky but
eager to please.
 
Super needy.
 
Fairly fucked up in the head already.
 
Perfect for me, really.”
 
She took a sip of her coffee.
 
“I mean not for me, ew, for my little… evil
scheme, I guess you can call it?”
 
Casey laughed, grabbing a bowl of grapes from her refrigerator and
taking a seat with them on a barstool.
 
Amanda wasn’t even sure how to react to what she was seeing and
hearing.
 
She hadn’t expected such
an extreme level of shamelessness.
 
And heartlessness.
 
Her head
shook in awe.

“What is wrong with you? Why would you do this to
someone? Just use them and everything they have to… promote a fucking
TV
show
?”

“Oh honey, I wouldn’t do it to just anyone, I’m not
an idiot.
 
Ian was just perfect.
 
You made him this person who wasn’t quite
famous but he wasn’t completely random, and I needed someone with…” she shrugged.
 
“The bare minimum of credibility, I
guess.
 
Famous enough to make the
little video,” her lip curled.
 
“Not
famous enough for anyone to believe him if he decided to say it was a hoax.”

Amanda ground her teeth, her heart pounding.
 
“Which it was.
 
And now I know too.”

Casey nearly choked on her grape, though Amanda
suspected it was for show, to convey how truly humorous she found her statement.
 
“Yes, you know too,” Casey nodded, her
pale eyes merry.
 
“And what
credibility do you have? Your word against mine is still a joke, doll.
 
You’re naïve to that you’re more
believable just because you’re sober.”
 
Her eyes hardened as she watched Amanda realize her words as the
truth.
 
She then tittered as she
returned to placidly stirring her coffee.
 
“Considering you’ve just been dumped, fired and made totally irrelevant,
people will only think you’re whoring out lies for attention.
 
So if you want, by all means, tell on
me.”
 
Her smile was indomitable,
completely undaunted.
 
“It’ll be
good for a couple more laughs.”

~

The shades were all drawn to avoid pictures into the
apartment, and the darkness reminded Amanda of her bedroom in Merit, the day
after she’d snapped at L.J’s Diner.
 
Pop Dinner’s malicious headlines were Tandy Mueller, and the paparazzi
outside her window were her nosy neighbors.

Unfortunately this time, she didn’t have Ian to talk
to about everything.
 
Not only that,
she no longer had a job to report to or a crush that wanted anything to do with
her again.
 
Days later, Dylan had
finally called.
 
He was sweet and
apologetic as usual, which helped considering his call was for the purpose of explaining
why he could no longer see her.
 
“It’s…
out of respect for my friends and colleagues who worked so hard with me on the
gala.
 
It was their night too and I
let them down.
 
It’s not easy for
me but… I felt I had to make it up to them, and I truly hope you understand.”

Amanda understood entirely too well, considering it
was the same sentiment she had conveyed to Ian less than two weeks ago.
 
Suddenly, she had become that risky, potentially
humiliating friend.
 
That liability.
 
It was a strange notion to grasp
considering just last week’s headlines.
 
“FROM LOWLY EX TO HIGH SOCIETY”
and
“AMANDA NATHAN: MOVIN’ ON UP!”
She
was aware that Hollywood status was known to yo-yo dramatically, but she truly wondered
if she had become one of its most extreme cases, having gone from rock bottom
to the top on so many different occasions in such a short period of time.

But alas, she was at the bottom once again, and with no
foreseeable trip back to the top.
 
And
of course, the gossip pages were quick to be cruel again with headlines like
“MESSY MANDY WRECKS DYLAN’S POSH NIGHT”
or
“THE VERY DUMP-ABLE AMANDA NATHAN.”
 
And those were the nicer ones –
the ones she’d spotted on the tabloid covers during her one trip to stock up on
groceries before returning to her apartment, shielding her eyes from the paparazzi,
pulling down all her shades and officially going into hiding.
 
It was depressing – she couldn’t
deny that.
 
And more so with zero
friends to talk about it with.
 
No Liam,
no Casey, no Ian, no Dylan.
 
And it
felt dumb, but of all those people, she kind of wished she could have Liam back
for just a second – to just update him on what had happened since he’d
left for Nebraska, to tell him that he’d been right about Casey and she should
have listened to him all along.
 
In
her imagination, he was always gentle and comforting rather than smug or snarky.
 
But alas, it was only her imagination.

To top everything off, Amanda knew how long overdue
she was to venture back onto the Internet.
 
She had been trying to avoid the headlines and comments and
negativity, but that meant ignoring her moderating duties on HDU for far too
long.
 
With Ian gone, they desperately
needed her back from the “mini vacation” she’d emailed the site owner about
taking.
 
Plus, moderating was back
to being her one and only job.

Alright, get back
to it.
 
It might actually make you
feel better.

Amanda gave herself the best pep talk she could
muster before trudging over to her laptop on the kitchen counter.
 
She’d been flirting with her breaking
point since leaving Casey’s apartment several days ago, but perhaps the fact
that she’d never reached it was a good sign.
 
Perhaps, since her mood was at its absolute lowest in a long
while, it could only stand to get better.
 
Maybe, the moderating queue would miraculously have some uplifting,
inspiring or at least somewhat comical piece of celebrity news to lift her
spirits.

Trying to will a positive energy, Amanda opened her
laptop and navigated straight to HDU.
 
She clicked on the queue and instantly, at the top, was a story that
made her heart stop.